Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Aberdeen Corporation Order Confirmation Bill,

Considered; to be read the Third time To-morrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

TREATMENT ALLOWANCES.

Mr. PIELOU: 2.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is aware that the Ministry are referring disabled men for treatment to the panel doctor but, in some cases, refusing the recommendation of that panel doctor so far as the payment of treatment allowances is concerned: and whether he will see that due regard is paid by the Ministry to the treatment prescribed by the panel doctor in so far as it affects the treatment allowances Regulations?

The MINISTER of PENSIONS (Major Tryon): I would remind my hon. Friend that the conditions governing the grant of allowances under Article 6 of the Royal Warrant are not identical with those which determine certification for the purpose of Health Insurance, with which the insurance practitioner is concerned. For the purpose of the former allowances, certification by a medical officer of the Ministry is required under the terms of the Warrant. At the same time any information which may be supplied by a
panel doctor with regard to one of his pensioner patients is always taken into careful consideration in connection with any certificate required to be given by an officer of the Ministry.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that where a local panel doctor has supplied treatment and allowances are necessary because of the peculiar kind of work of the individual, invariably they are ignored, while the income of the man receiving panel treatment is absolutely nil? Does he not think consideration might be given to those cases?

Major TRYON: It is not the case that certificates of panel doctors are ignored, but obviously in Ministry work the decision of the Ministry doctor must be final.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Should not special cases, for instance where a coal miner is not able to follow his work owing to his injuries, be reconsidered in the light of the panel doctor's recommendation?

Major TRYON: I quite realise the hon. Member's point. It is one which, if carried into effect, would increase some pensions and decrease others.

INCREASED AWARDS.

Mr. PIELOU: 3.
asked the Minister of Pensions if he will state the number of cases that have been recommended by local Ministry doctors for reconsideration by the correction of errors board, and the total number of such cases that have resulted in the final award being increased?

Major TRYON: I am unable to furnish statistics on the lines specified by my hon. Friend. But I may say that up to the 21st November last 2,550 cases had been dealt with by the Ministry. In 1,402 of these cases a further grant had been made. In the remaining cases considered it had been found, either on local medical advice or otherwise, that there was no ground for disturbing the final award.

FUNERAL GRANTS.

Mr. PIELOU: 4.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether funeral grants are
allowed to widows pensioned under Article 17b when the death of the husband was wholly and solely due to war service?

Major TRYON: The answer is in the affirmative.

PENSION OFFICES. YORKSHIRE.

Mr. ROBINSON: 5.
asked the Minister if Pensions how many fall-time area pension offices and sub-offices there are in the county of Yorkshire and where they are situated; and the maximum distance that a pensioner may be living from the nearest office where he can apply for treatment in respect of disabilities due to war service?

Major TRYON: There are in the county of Yorkshire 21 Ministry offices, namely: ten area offices at York, Keighley, Harrogate, Hull, Hnddersfield, Bradford, Leeds, Wakefield, Doncaster and Sheffield; four whole-time sub-offices at Scarborough, Halifax, Dewsbury and Barnsley, and seven part-time sub-offices at Whitby, Northailerton, Todmorden, Pontefract, Goole, Mexborough and Rotherham. I am satisfied that these offices provide adequate facilities for pensioners to apply for treatment, &c. Pensioners living in the remote districts can, and do, make application by post.

Mr. LUNN: Do those who have to come from a distance have their expenses paid?

Major TRYON: There are a number of cases in which expenses are paid.

DEVONSHIRE REGIMENT (O. MORGAN).

Mr. BENJAMIN SMITH: 8.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether his attention has been called to the casie of Mr. O. Morgan, of 34, Coltman Street, Greenwich, S.E.1O, late private, No. 32,284, of the Devonshire Regiment, who, as the result of war wounds, was awarded a pension of 10e. a week for 104 weeks, and in September, 1924, a gratuity of £20 at the end of the pension period; whether he is aware that, the wounds on one of Morgan's ankles having broke out again, the man is receiving treatment under the Ministry of Pensions although all applications for further pension have been rejected by the Ministry; and whether, in view of the fact that Morgan
is practically a helpless cripple and unable to work, consideration will be given to his further claim for pension?

Major TRYON: I have made inquiries into this case, and find that the man is receiving surgical treatment with the necessary allowances. At the conclusion of treatment, his condition for pension purposes will be considerd in the normal course, and if the final award is found to be seriously erroneous, any necessary adjustment will be made.

CHILDREN'S PENSIONS (DEDUCTIONS).

Mr. DALTON: 11.
asked the Minister of Pensions for what purpose it is proposed to issue Regulations authorising the deduction of sums up to 5s. a week from the pensions of the children, aged between 14 and 16, of deceased sailors, soldiers and airmen; whether the money will be paid into the Post Office Savings Bank in separate accounts in the name of each child; in the event of the death of the child to whom would the accumulated arrears be paid; and whether, before the new Regulations are issued, he will lay them upon the Table of the House for the information of Members?

Major TRYON: The object of the instructions referred to, which would apply to motherless children only in receipt of wages, is solely in the interests of the children, in order to provide them with means of purchasing tools, an outfit or other similar emergency or occasional expenses, which may be necessary between the ages referred to or later. With regard to the second and third parts of the question, the administrative arrangements are now under consideration, but it is, of course, clear that any balance of warrant allowance unexpended is the property of the child and would be subject to disposal in the same manner as any other arrears of pension or property of a beneficiary in the hands of the Ministry. The matter would be dealt with by instruction and not by statutory regulation, and the procedure suggested would not, therefore, be appropriate, but as soon as the arrangements are complete, I shall be happy to cause information to be embodied in a Paper, copies of which could be placed in the
Library of the House and will be furnished to any Member who requires them.

Mr. DALTON: Will interest be added to any sums held back from these children?

Major TRYON: I am not prepared to reply to that at once. The general matter has been considered by various councils and on the whole the suggestion has been favourably received.

1ST MONMOUTHSHIBE REGIMENT (W. AUSTIN).

Mr. BARKER: 13.
asked the Minister of Pensions if he is aware that a pension has been refused to ex-Private W. Austin, No. 227,893, 1st Monmouthshire Regiment, at present residing at 5, Parrot Row, Blaina, Monmouthshire; that this man was gassed on 24th June, 1917; that he was in eight hospitals for a total period of two years before he was discharged; and that he has been in hospital 23 weeks since he was discharged and on treatment allowance for two years; and will he have this case fully reinvestigated and the man reboarded so that he may obtain his pension?

Major TRYON: I am having further enquiry made into the facts of this case, and I will communicate with the hon. Member when I am in a position to do so.

AREA DEPUTY COMMISSIONERS OF MEDICAL SERVICES.

Mr. MONTAGUE: 15.
asked the Minister of Pensions what is the number of medical officers holding the appointment of Area Deputy Commissioner of Medical Services and what is the average number of square miles in each area outside the Metropolis; and whether any deputy commissioner of medical services is responsible for more than one area as originally constituted under the War Pensions Act, 1921?

Major TRYON: The number of Area Deputy Commissioners of Medical Services is 57, of whom five are stationed in the Metropolitan areas. The square mileage of the districts covered by these medical officers is irrelevant to the question of their proper distribution, which is made, and where necessary, varied,
in accordance with the distribution and needs of the ex-service population. In the more densely populated districts, where the work is heaviest, the deputy commissioners are provided with assistants, who number 30 in all. The reply to the last part of the question is in the affirmative.

CENTRAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE.

Mr. T. KENNEDY: 17.
asked the Minister of Pensions when the last meeting of the Central Advisory Committee was held; whether the committee had under consideration any resolutions passed by regional advisory councils; and, if so, what were the resolutions and the recommendations made?

Major TRYON: The last meeting was held on the 28th July last. The subjects under discussion at the meeting included matters raised in resolutions received both from advisory councils and war pensions committees in regard to medical treatment and allowances, children's allowances and time limits on fresh claims to pension. The Central Advisory Committee does not proceed by way of formal resolution, but various suggestions were made on the matters referred to which have been considered by me with a view to giving effect to them as far as may be found practicable.

Mr. KENNEDY: When will the next meeting be held?

Major TRYON: That has not yet been arranged. I hope in the New Year.

ISSUE OFFICES, EDINBURGH AND ACTON.

Mr. KENNEDY: 19.
asked the Minister of Pensions what was the number of pensions issued by the Issue Office at Edinburgh and the Issue Office at Acton, respectively, in the years ending 30th September, 1922, 1923, 1924, and 1925; what was the number of interim awards made by each office in each of the years in question; and what was the cost of the staff and administration in each office in each year?

Major TRYON: As the reply contains a number of figures. I propose, with the hon. Member's permission, to circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the answer:


APPROXIMATE NUMBER OF CASES IN PAYMENT.


—
30th September, 1922.
30th September, 1923.
30th September, 1924.
30th September, 1925.



Scotland.


Men's Pensions and Allowances
69,000
58,000
52,000
42,500


Widows and Remarried Widows (with Children).
18,800
18,000
18,900
18,950


Dependants and Motherless Children
42,200
42,500
41,900
41,250


Total
130, 000
119,400
112,800
102,700



Acton.


Men's Pensions and Allowances
654,000
553,000
503,000
469,500


Windows and Remarried Widows (with Children)
197,200
199,600
198,600
197,550


Dependants and Motherless Children
334,800
329,500
323,100
320,250


Total
1,186,000
1,082,100
1,024,700
987,300




*Interim Awards for Year ending:—


—
30th September, 1922.
30th September, 1923.
30th September, 1924.
30th September, 1925.


Scotland
…
…
…
…
2,035
1,280
872
347


Remainder of Country
…
…
…
…
45,280
59,760
34,206
9,663


* Interim Awards are made is the Awards Branch, not in Issue Office.




COST OF STAFF.


—
30th September, 1922.
30th September, 1923.
30th September, 1924.
30th September, 1925.










£
£
£


Scotland
…
…
…
…
…
…
Issue Office Edinburgh, I was not set up until early in 1922.
50,187
37,020
29,110









£





Acton
…
…
…
…
…
…
808,304
621,809
521,253
463,544


Certain duties are performed in Pension Issue Office, Acton, which have no counterpart in the Office at Edinburgh, and since the abolition of the Regions in Ireland, Wales and the greater part of England, duties formerly discharged in regional offices have been added to those carried out by the Issue Office Staff at Acton.

ERRONEOUS AWARDS.

Mr. BROMLEY: 20.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether, seeing that all awards made under the Regulations governing erroneous awards are made under the Dispensing Warrant of 1884
and after reference to the Treasury, he will consider the desirability of introducing such amendments to the Royal Warrant of 1919 as will permit of a man whose pension has ceased and the disability has recurred, and of men in receipt
of life pensions whose degree of disablement has increased since the issue of the final awards, appealing for the re-issue or increase of pension to his Department and avoid the months' delay that follows owing to the need of referring cases to the Treasury after the Ministry has decided the merits of the case justify the re-issue or increase of pension?

Major TRYON: The object proposed by the hon. Member would necessitate not an amendment of any Warrant, but the repeal of Section 4 of the War Pensions Act, 1921, and the abolition of the whole scheme of final settlement for disablement due to War service, which I am satisfied would not be in accordance with either the wishes or the interests of ex-service men. In cases where it is sought to impugn the statutory settlement otherwise than by the legal appeal procedure provided for by that Section, it is obvious that there must be the most careful consideration of the whole of the circumstances. In particular it must be shown that as a final decision as to the normal extent or degree of disablement resulting exclusively from the effects of War service, the final award is seriously and permanently erroneous. It is my desire to simplify the procedure as far as possible, but time is inevitably occupied in some cases in making the inquiries necessary in order to arrive at a just decision.

SPECIAL GRANTS COMMITTEE.

Mr. BROMLEY: 21.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether, seeing that it cost £24,670 for the Special Grants Committee to deal with approximately 34,000 cases in the first 10 months of this year, and that most, if not all, the cases had previously been considered by the area war pension committees and area officers, he will consider, in the interests of economy and efficiency, the termination of the appointments of the members of the Special Grants Committee and the transfer of the powers and duties of the committee to the area war pension committees?

Major TRYON: The suggestion made by the hon. Member was considered at length by the Departmental Committee in 1921. For the reasons given by the committee in their report, I am satisfied that the interests of economy and
efficiency, which the hon. Member has in view, would not be served by the adoption of the course suggested.

Mr. R. MORRISON: Has the right hon. Gentleman power to change the membership, and does he not think that the time has come when there should be some revision?

Major TRYON: That does not arise out of the main question.

MENTAL CASES.

Mr. G IBBINS: 22.
asked the Minister of Pensions what proportion of the 26,000 in receipt of treatment with allowances are inmates of mental institutions; what is the number of chronic cases which have been more or less under treatment since discharge; and whether, particularly in the case of neurasthenics, he will consider the possibility of awarding a good life pension, and release the men from treatment?

Major TRYON: About 6,600 of the total number of cases under treatment are inmates of mental institutions. Apart from this class of case, there are a substantial number of men who have received prolonged periods of treatment since their discharge. Many of them, e.g., those suffering from paraplegia or severe cases of wound and injury, require constant medical attention and skilled nursing. Others, although happily not in this condition, are. in accordance with medical advice, receiving prolonged institutional treatment and cure, combined where possible with occupation. It is not the intention of the Ministry that cases should indefinitely or unnecessarily remain in an institution, and where it is considered by my medical advisers that any case can more suitably be dealt with by discharge from institutional care, with an appropriate rate of pension, this course is adopted.

Mr. THURTLE: Does that reply apply to cases at Saltash?

Major TRYON: Yes. We do not want to give up hope of curing these men if we can.

PARENTS ALLOWANCE.

Mr. GIBBINS: 23.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether, on the death of a parent in receipt of a dependant's pension, any action is taken to notify the
surviving parent that; the pension may be transferred to him or her, as the case may be?

Major TRYON: On the death of a parent in receipt of pension the Ministry would not ordinarily know whether there is a surviving parent, and could not therefore undertake individual notification. The possibility of transfer (which applies of course only to certain classes of pension) would, however, be explained to a surviving parent if he or she made inquiry at the local office of the Ministry or otherwise.

Mr. HAYES: Is it possible for the local office to make inquiry as to whether there is a surviving relative?

Major TRYON: We should be glad if in any case the local committees could get information which would enable us to pay any pension which is due.

Mr. FENBY: If a parent in receipt of a dependant's allowance goes into an infirmary, say, eight weeks prior to the death of the parent, what justification is there for the pension being stopped for those eight weeks?

Major TRYON: That does not arise here, but if the hon. Member has a case in mind I should be very glad to go into it.

Mr. FENBY: The right hon. Gentleman has a case of that kind under his consideration now from my constituency.

Major TRYON: It shall be gone into.

PENDLEBUKY SUB-OFFICE.

Mr. COMPTON: 24.
asked the Minister of Pensions if he proposes to close the sub-office in Pendlebury on the ground of economy; and what is the estimated yearly saving anticipated?

Major TRYON: There is not a sub-office of the Ministry of Pensions in Pendlebury, but in the adjacent district of Swinton them is a part-time sub-office. The question of closing this office has been under consideration, and it has been decided to keep it open for the present.

SALFOIID DISTRICT COMMITTEE.

Mr. COMPTON: 25.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether he will reconsider the proposal to merge the Salford, Eccles,
and District War Pensions Committee into the Manchester War Pensions Committee, in view of the fact that a committee covering such a large and congested area will entail hardship on ex-service men in the outer districts having to travel to Manchester?

Major TRYON: There has been no proposal to merge the two committees mentioned by the hon. Member. An alteration in the control of the staff and office arrangements in Salford is under consideration, and has been referred to the two committees concerned for their observations, but it is not in contemplation that the office there should be closed.

SEVEN YEARS' LIMIT.

Mr. DENNISON: 26.
asked the Minister of Pensions in how many cases have pensions been granted where the claim was made after the seven years' limit; and what special circumstances, apart from a man being under treatment and thus barred from submitting a claim until the course of treatment was completed, would permit of the Ministry considering a claim made for pension in respect of war injury after the expiry of the seven years' limit?

Major TRYON: Grants have been made in about 11 cases where a first application for pension was made in the circumstances referred to. As I explained to the House on the occasion of the Debate on the Vote of my Department, I am prepared to consider exceptional cases in which it is clearly shown that a man has been seriously incapacitated by his war service and that a claim could not resonably be made at an earlier date. I would point out that if a man is undergoing treatment for a disability already accepted by the Ministry this does not debar him from making an application in respect of disablement arising from another cause.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: In the case of an ex-service man who was discharged in December, 1918, and who the authorities declare was discharged in June of that year, what opportunity has he to prove that he was discharged in December and, therefore, be enabled to appeal?

Major TRYON: I should be very happy personally to examine the case where such a thing has occurred.

COMPASSIONATE AND OTHER ALLOWANCES.

Mr. LANSBURY: 27.
asked the Minister of Pensions the number of pensioners and persons in receipt of compassionate or other allowances who were on the pay roll on 1st January this year and the number on 1st December?

Major TRYON: The total number of beneficiaries under the Royal Warrants or otherwise in receipt of compassionate and other allowances was approximately 1.963,000 on the 1st January and 1,859.000 on the 1st December.

Captain SHAW: What has caused the decrease?

Major TRYON: The main cause of the reduction in the number of people in receipt of these allowances is due to the fact that 55.000 children have reached the age of 16.

MINISTRY OF PENSIONS (PRINCIPAL ASSISTANT SECRETARIES).

Mr. KENNEDY: 18.
asked the Minister of Pensions on what date approval was given to the appointment of two principal assistant secretaries to the Ministry of Pensions: whether the volume of work had at that time commenced to decline, and has continued to decline each year: and whether there is any reason for the retention of two principal assistant secretaries in the Department?

Major TRYON: A post as second secretary was authorised by the Treasury on the 28th April, 1920. Authority was given for the conversion of this post into one for a principal assistant secretary and for the creation of a second post on that grade on the 10th October, 1921 The volume, though not the complexity, of the work of the Ministry had already shown a decline, and the decline has since continued. The number of principal officers at Ministry Headquarters was recently reduced by two, and I am entirely satisfied that there is sufficient responsible work to necessitate the retention of the officers referred to.

ALIEN (NATIONALISATION).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 28.
asked the Secretary of State for the Home Depart-
ment if he will state why Hyman Sunderland, of Liverpool, resident in this country since 1888, who applied for nationalisation in 1914, has not yet been granted his papers?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir William Joynson-Hicks): The application referred to was received shortly after the outbreak of war, and, as in the ease of thousands of other applications received at that time, its consideration was not proceeded with. There is no trace of any later communication from the applicant, but if he wishes to renew his application and will write to the Home Office the matter will receive attention.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman will arrange with his hon. Friend the Member for North Salford (Mr. Finburgh) about the difference he had with him as to cases in which applications had been made and had not been granted?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I do not know how that applies to this case at all. This is a case where application was made in 1914, and I certainly was not then responsible.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Are we to understand that all the applications made in 1914 are still outstanding, and that they must be repeated if any consideration is to be given to them?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: No. The answer to the question is quite clear. There were thousands of applications in 1914 which, quite obviously, could not be proceeded with during the War by my predecessor. They were put on one side. The bulk of them applied over again. If this gentleman cares to apply, the case will be considered at once.

HEAVY CHEMICAL TRADE (ACCIDENTS).

Mr. J. BAKER: 30.
asked the Home Secretary whether, seeing that in the Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories for 1924 it is stated that only three out of 5,000 accidents in the heavy chemical trade were due to a breach of the Regulations, it is proposed to introduce further Regulations with a view to reducing the number of accidents in this trade?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: The 5,000 accidents referred to represent the total number of accidents reported from all classes of works in the Warrington district. Only 676 of these occurred in the chemical trade. The great majority of these 676 accidents appear to have been due to risks which are incidental to every class of industry and which, for the most part, are not preventable by Regulations, such as, for example, persons falling, or stepping on or knocking against objects, and so forth. So far as one can see at present, the only hopeful way of dealing with this class of accidents is through the establishment of safety organisations in the individual factories and the development generally of the Safety First movement. Everything possible will be done by the Factory Department to stimulate action in this direction.

VARNISHES OR DOPES (MANU-FACTURING CONDITIONS).

Mr. J. BAKER: 31.
asked the Home Secretary whether, having regard to the great increase in the use of varnishes or dopes composed of celluloid or nitrocellulose dissolved in acetone, amyl acetate, or similar solvent, he is satisfied that the present Regulations governing ventilation and the absence of naked lights are satisfactory; and, if not, whether it is proposed to introduce Regulations governing factories where the varnishes or dopes are used at an early date?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Very few accidents or dangerous occurrences from the use of these varnishes or dopes have so far been reported, and I am advised that so far as danger to health from inhalation of the fumes is concerned, the existing requirements of the Act have been found adequate. The Chief Inspector is not satisfied as to the position in regard to the risk of fire or explosion, and special inquiries into this point are now in progress.

LEAD POISONING.

Mr. ROBINSON: 32.
asked the Home Secretary how many cases of lead poisoning occurred among pasters engaged in the manufacture or repair of electric accumulators in the years 1921, 1922, 1023,
and 1924, respectively; and whether any cases have been reported since the new code of Regulations came into force on 1st March, 1925?

Sir W.JOYNSON-HICKS: There were five such cases reported in 1021, 11 in 1922, 44 in 1923, and 42 in 1924. Since the 1st March last there have only been 15 cases among pasters. The new Regulations cannot be expected to have their full effect for a considerable time, but they appear to have already caused a substantial reduction in the number of cases.

CHEMICAL POISONING.

Mr. ROBINSON: 33.
asked the Home Secretary how many cases of poisoning by carbon bisulphide, aniline poisoning, and chronic benzene poisoning have been reported since the 1st February, 1925; and what special steps are being taken by his Department to diminish the risk of chemical poisoning?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Two cases of carbon bisulphide and 30 cases of anilin poisoning have been reported, but no case of chronic benzene poisoning. Special steps are taken to diminish the risk by following up each case, and generally by the enforcement of the special precautions required by the Chemical Works Regulations of 1922. The whole subject is receiving special attention from the medical inspectors.

COMMUNIST PROSECUTIONS.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 36.
asked the Home Secretary whether it is proposed to take further proceedings against those members of the Communist party who are not imprisoned; and whether instructions have been given to effect the arrest of prominent Communists in the provinces?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: In reply to the first part of the question, I can only say that it is not the practice of the authorities concerned to give previous notice of their intentions in such a matter; and as regards the second part, the hon. and gallant Member must draw his own conclusions from the fact that such arrests have not been made.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that previous notice was given through the Sunday papers, and that an obviously inspired paragraph appeared that the provincial police had been ordered to round up all their Communists? How does he account for that?

Mr. SPEAKER: I do not think a Minister can be held responsible for what appears in the Sunday newspapers.

Captain WEDGWOOD BENN: Is it not a fact that, nine days before the other arrests, the right hon. Gentleman himself, in great detail, announced that some of the accused were guilty?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: There is no foundation whatever for that statement.

Captain BENN: Does the right hon. Gentleman deny the report in the "Times" of 6th October, in which he gave the names of two of the defendants and the announcement that they were "in the pay of Moscow"?.

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Being "in the pay of Moscow" does not make them guilty. They were charged with quite a different offence from that. The hon. and gallant Member knows that the statement which he has just made is quite without foundation.

Captain BENN: Not at all.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 37.
asked the Home Secretary whether the 12 Communists recently sentenced to imprisonment are being treated as political prisoners and given appropriate treatment as such?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: The 12 prisoners in question, who were ordered by the Court to be imprisoned in the Second Division, are being treated in accordance with the Statutory Rules respecting offenders of that division.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the past political prosecutions were common in this country, and that political prisoners were treated in a separate category, in the First Division, and that every other country in Europe, including Russia, treats them in that way? Why does he treat them differently?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Does the hon. and gallant Member include Russia?

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Certainly, I do.

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: The decision of the Court was that these prisoners were to be imprisoned in the second division, and they are having all the privileges of that division.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he is extremely ill-informed about Russia, and that political prisoners in Russia are given special treatment?

HON. MEMBERS: Your friends.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: I visited some of the friends of hon. Members opposite when there.

Mr. LANSBURY: Are these prisoners allowed books other than those in the prison library, and any writing material?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I cannot say that they are allowed books other than those in the prison library, but if representations are made that they should be allowed fresh books, I will see whether anything can be done.

HON. MEMBERS: Why?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I may say to my hon. Friends that I have on many other occasions allowed special books. I see no real objection to it. With regard to writing materials, prisoners in the second division have certain extra privileges, and all of these these men will have.

Mr. MACLEAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman see, too, that these prisoners are released when Bottomley is released?

SPECIAL CONSTABULARY (LONDON HOSPITALS).

Mr. SCURR: 38.
asked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that, at a recent meeting of the medical students of London Hospital, the dean of the students' guild stated that he had received a request from the Home Office that he should take steps to enrol the students of the hospital into a special branch of the special constabulary; that this action was taken in view of the
possibility of industrial trouble in the spring; and that similar requests had been made to the deans of guild at St. Bartholomew's and Guy's Hospitals; and whether such request has been made by the Home Office, and the reason for the action?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I have not made any request such as the hon. Member suggests. The Commander of the Headquarters Central Division of the Metropolitan Special Constabulary addressed an ordinary recruiting meeting of the students at the London Hospital last month, but I am informed that no statements as suggested in the question were made either by the commander or by the dean who introduced him to the meeting.

WOLVERHAMPTON POLICE (W. BATES).

Mr. HAYES: 40.
asked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that Police-constable. William Bates, Wolver-hampton Police Force, was called upon by the chief constable to resign on account of the police constable's wife having been convicted of petty larceny, and that the police constable was threatened with dismissal if he did not do so; will he state under what statutory Regulation or section of the discipline code the chief constable has power to carry out this threat; and, in view of the constable's 35 years' service, what compensation is proposed for the loss of his livelihood when innocent of any dereliction of duty?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I am aware of the facts of this case, and I under stand that the watch committee came to the conclusion that if the constable was not prepared to resign, there would be no alternative to dismissing him. In a borough force the power of dismissal rests, not with the chief constable, bat with the watch committee under Section 191 of the Municipal Corporations Act, 1885. There is no specific provision in the Police Regulations on the point in question, and there is no power to grant compensation.

Mr. HAYES: Were the Police Regulations and the disciplinary code not framed in order that no man should be wrongfully dismissed? Is this man to be
subject to dismissal apart from the disciplinary code?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: The powers of dismissal are exercised, not by myself, but by the watch committee.

Mr. HAYES: Under your Regulations?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Under my Regulations. They have, under my Regulations, dismissed this man. I cannot interfere.

Mr. HAYES: Do I understand that this man has been dismsised under the statutory Regulations made by the right hon. Gentleman?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I must assume, as I do assume, that the watch committee of an important town like Wolverhampton are acting in accordance with the law and (he Regulations. They have dismissed this man.

Mr. HAYES: Can I have a reply to that part of my question, which asked under what statutory Regulation or section of the discipline code the chief constable has power to carry out this threat of dismissal?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I can only answer that the watch committee act under the whole of the Regulations. Under which particular Regulation they have acted I do not know.

Mr. HAYES: Would the right hon. Gentleman look at the Regulations, and if he be satisfied that there is no Regulation under which this man has been dismissed, will he communicate with the watch committee so as to have their action rectified?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I must consider that. The hon. Member had better put the question on the Paper. He is now introducing, or affecting to introduce, powers to myself which I do not think I possess.

Mr. MACLEAN: Does any Regulation exist that affects the police to the extent that if any small offence is committed by any member of the family, the individual who is a member of the police force is to be punished by dismissal?

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member had better put that question on the Paper.

FLOGGING SENTENCE.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 41.
asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the ease of J. H. Clarke, sentenced at the Surrey Assizes to seven years' penal servitude and to be flogged; and whether, seeing that Clarke was twice wounded in the War, the flogging will be remitted?

Sir W. JOYNSON-H1CKS: It is open to Clarke, within ten days of the conviction, to give notice of application to the Court of Criminal Appeal for leave to appeal against sentence, and Section 7 (2) of the Criminal Appeal Act provides specially for the case of a conviction involving sentence of corporal punishment.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Could not this mediaeval form of torture be omitted?

Captain ARTHUR EVANS: Is it not a fact that before these sentences are carried out, men are medically examined to see whether they are fit to receive a flogging?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Certainly.

OLYMPIA CIRCUS (PERFORMING LIONS).

Colonel APPLIN: 42.
asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been drawn to the announcement of a performance for children at Olympia called the Christmas Circus, in which a single unarmed man is to appear in a cage with 70 lions and put thorn through certain manœuvres; and whether, in view of the demoralising effect on children, and the risk of life, he will say what steps he proposes to take to prevent such an exhibition being given to children?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Yes, Sir, but I have no power to prevent such an exhibition being given.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the lion is the national symbol, and that this brings the lion into contempt?

Captain W. SHAW: As this is a question of school children being taken to this exhibit to see the lions performing in a cage and a man inside the cage with them, will my right hon. Friend allow such a thing?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: The answer is that I have no power in the matter. There is no Act of Parliament giving me power.

DEATH OF MISS I. WATKINS.

Mr. CHARLES EDWARDS: 44.
asked the Home Secretary whether he is aware of the correspondence which has passed between a firm of solicitors and the Public Prosecutor as to the mystery surrounding the death of Miss Iris Watkins, Blackwood, and that certain evidence which has come to light has not been acted on; and will he secure this evidence and, if it appears to be advisable, instruct Scotland Yard to proceed with investigations?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I am aware of the correspondence referred to, but I am not aware that any evidence has come to light that has no; been acted on. I understand the correspondence has been brought to the notice of the Chief Constable of Monmouthshire, and as the hon. Member was informed on 25th November, assistance in such cases is not given by Scotland Yard except upon request by the local police.

Mr. G. EDWARDS: Are we entirely in the hands of an obstinate chief constable? I have seen a firm of solicitors to-day and they mentioned four new witnesses who are prepared to give evidence if this case is reopened. Has the Home Secretary no power over a chief constable who may not wish to proceed further with a case?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I really cannot assume to myself the power to regulate the action of the chief constable. I have no such power. Chief constables are appointed and regulated by local authorities. I have no power at all.

IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY.

Captain A.EVANS: 45.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that any financial crisis in the iron and steel industry must have the effect of damaging the credit of British industry generally, and involving a complete set-back to any tendency to a revival extending over a much wider area than that of the industry itself, and that the price index for iron and steel products is now 19.6
per cent. compared with that for all commodities of 54 per cent. above 1913, and many staple products of iron and steel have already been reduced to 1913 levels; and, in view of these facts, if he will take steps to protect this industry in accordance with declared policy?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Sir Burton Chadwick): I have been asked to reply. I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the answer given to the hon. Member for Flint by the Prime Minister on 7th December, when he said he hoped to make a statement; in regard to this industry before the House rises, but could not at present indicate a date.

NATIONAL EXPENDITURE.

Sir FRANK NELSON: 46.
asked the Prime Minister whether, in order that everything possible may he done to secure reduction of Government expenditure, he will consider appointing a group of independent committees, each, containing one Member of Parliament and two business men, to examine and report to him on the various Departments?

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Churchill): I would remind my hon. Friend that in recent years Departments have been examined and reported upon by various Committees similar to those suggested, and also by the Geddes Committee and the Anderson Committee, consisting of such eminent business men as Sir E. Geddes, Lord Incheape, Lord Farringdon, Lord Maclay, Sir Guy Granet, Sir Alan Anderson, Sir Herbert Lawrence and Sir Peter Rylands. At the present time a further comprehensive inquiry is being made into every Department and every branch of national expenditure by a special Cabinet Committee and also by the Colwyn Committee. In these circumstances I do not think farther Committees of the kind suggested could serve any useful purpose.

Sir F. NELSON: May I ask, with all respect, in view of the very favourable results arrived at by the Committees enumerated by my right hon. Friend, does be not think that the present Cabinet Committee, in the very onerous duties it has undertaken, might be insisted by an independent Committee such as I have outlined?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I do not think we should gain any assistance from an additional Committee at the present time.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir JOSEPH NALL: Could not arrangements be made for the Estimates Committee to consider in detail some of the more important Estimates before they are considered in Committee of Supply in this House; and is it not the fact that the Estimates Committee usually functions after the Vote has been passed?

Mr. CHURCHILL: That is a rather far-reaching question, and I think notice ought to be given of it.

Mr. H. WILLIAMS: Have any of these committees of inquiry examined in detail the work performed by individual civil servants and decided whether it is perforated in the most efficient way; have they inquired as to whether the system of correspondence is the most economical, and would the right hon. Gentleman consider an inquiry of that kind?

Mr. CHURCHILL: These matters have been and are at the present time subject to examination.

Mr. N. MACLEAN: Since the right hon. Gentleman has admitted the value of a committee of business men, will he experiment with a committee of non-business men?

Mr. CLARRY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a strong feeling in the country that any committee which depends very largely on the departmental heads for suggestions cannot be expected to make any drastic proposals for economy?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I have no reason to suppose—indeed I have the strongest reason not to suppose—that the permanent heads of the different Departments will not loyally support their official Parliamentary chiefs in the concerted effort which is now being made to check the growth of expenditure.

CABINET (NUMBER OF MEMBERS).

Commander BELLAIRS: 47.
asked the Prime Minister if he will circulate a statement showing the size of the Cabinet in some of the leading countries: and, in
view of the changes which had to be made during the War, if he will consider the appointment of a Parliamentary Committee to investigate the whole question of the size of the Cabinet?

Mr. CHURCHILL: The answer to both parts of the question is in the negative. My hon. and gallant Friend could, I think, obtain the information which he desires by consulting some of the annual books of reference, and I do not think that the labour involved in the preparation of such a statement would be justified by its results.

Commander BELLAIRS: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the British Cabinet is the largest in the world? I beg to give notice that I propose to call attention to this question at the earliest possible moment.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION.

GRANTS (CIRCULAR 1,371).

Mr. TREVELYAN THOMSON: 48.
asked the President of the Board of Education the number of children under the age of five and between the ages of five and six in the elementary schools in Middlesbrough Education Authority, and the money he estimates he will save on these children's education during the next three years under the new system of grants suggested by Circular 1,371?

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Lord Eustace Percy): The numbers (on the registers) on 31st March, 1925, were:


Under five
…
956


Five and under six
…
2,482


As regards the latter part of the question, it is impossible to estimate what, if any, savings can properly be made in a particular area, as this must depend on local conditions.

Mr. THOMSON: Is the Noble Lord aware that if the education of these children is to be maintained, any apparent saving will be at the cost of the local ratepayers; and does he not consider that the taxpayers are better able to bear the burden than the ratepayers in these necessitous districts?

Lord E. PERCY: I do not accept the assumption of the hon. Member. He seems to ignore the fact that the Board will still be paying in grants more than 50 per cent. of the salaries of the teachers who are teaching the children.

Mr. COVE: Has the Noble Lord fixed the amount to be received by the authorities over the next three years without knowing what the economies might be, or what the expenditure might be?

Lord E. PERCY: I will answer that question, and I am sure the hon. Member will be interested in the answer. It is one of the beauties of the present grant system, that, although I am paying and Parliament is paying a grant on the current expenditure of local authorities, it is impossible for the Board ever to know what that expenditure actually is until six months after the end of the financial year.

Sir J. NALL: Has the Board considered the possibility of making grants on the capitation basis?

Lord E. PERCY: That has often been considered, but I think my hon. and gallant Friend if he tried to devise a formula would find it very difficult.

Dr. WATTS: In the interests of the health of the children, will the Noble Lord, if possible, see that children under five are kept out of the elementary schools?

Mr. STAMFORD: 55.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether his attention has been drawn to a statement of the Director of Education in Leeds that the operation of the proposals contained in Circular 1,371 will result in an annual loss of grant, to be met out of rates, of £36,785, of the equivalent of a rate of 3½d.; and whether, in view of the concern felt by local education authorities as to the effect of the new proposals, he will consider the withdrawal of the circular and leave the matter open until he has ascertained the views of the authorities concerned?

Mr. W. BAKER: 54.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that the Gloucestershire Education Committee is of the opinion that the effect of Circular 1,371 will be to prevent the
development of education and to throw a further burden on the ratepayers, and passed a, resolution to that effect; and whether, having regard to the widespread discontent, he will reconsider his position?

Miss WILKINSON: 57.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that the Middlesbrough Education Authority had undertaken work at the instigation of the Department which will be jeopardised by the instructions contained in Circular 1371 unless much heavier burdens are thrown on the rates; and whether in these circumstances ho, can give special consideration to distressed areas?

Lord E. PERCY: My attention has been drawn to the resolution of the Gloucestershire Education Committee, and also to the statement made by the Director for Education for Leeds, but the hon. Members will not, I hope, expect me to accept without investigation the figures quoted by them. As regards the latter part of the Question, hon. Members know that I have arranged to discuss the whole matter with local authorities.

Mr. TREVELYAN: May I ask whether one of the Noble Lord's colleagues, Lord Bledisloe, has discusssed the matter with him as he was asked to do by his council?

Lord E. PERCY: Yes, he has.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Is the Noble Lord aware that the application of Circular 1,371, in the case of the West Riding of Yorkshire, will mean a decrease in these grants varying from £100,000 next year to £246,000 in 1929; and does he not think that, in these circumstances, it is bound to cripple the development of education in that area?

Lord E. PERCY: I have received those West Riding figures. There is a great deal to discuss upon them, and I hope to discuss it.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Are we to understand that very special consideration is bound to be given to districts of that kind?

Lord E. PERCY: Yes, special consideration is bound to be given to districts where there is a new population problem,
and where a large number of new schools have to be built.

Miss WILKINSON: Will the Noble Lord be so good as to answer Question 57, which he lumped together with two others, but to which he did not give any reply?

Lord E. PERCY: I do not see anything to which I have not replied.

Miss WILKINSON: I asked a specific question in regard to work undertaken at the instigation of the Department.

Lord E. PERCY: I cannot make any general statement, but I am prepared to discuss these things with the local authorities, and I am going to do so with the Association of Local Authorities next week. Meanwhile I cannot make any general statement.

Mr. COVE: May I ask whether special consideration or special expenditure will be made and confined within the terms laid down by the appendix to Circular 1371? Will the amount of money exceed the amount laid down in the appendix?

Lord E. PERCY: I must return the same answer as I did to the hon. Lady. I cannot give any general assurance or make any general statement until I have seen the local authorities.

Mr. TREVELYAN: How long will local authorities who have been making their plans for the approval of the Board up to now be kept waiting to know how much they will be allowed to spend?

Lord E. PERCY: I have told the right hon. Gentleman I am meeting the Association of Local Authorities next week. But as to these local authorities having proceeded with the full approval of and at the instigation of the Board, I must remind the right hon. Gentleman that I specifically asked local authorities to defer non-urgent expenditure until they had submitter! their programme, so that I might be able to estimate the amount of money required and the amount of money available.

Mr. TREVELYAN: How many of these authorities have already submitted their programmes? Are there not many who have the approval of the Board?

Lord E. PERCY: No; six authorities alone have up to now submitted programmes under Circular 1358, and none of these programmes have yet been approved.

Mr. MORGAN JONES: May I take it that the Noble Lord will be able to make another announcement to the House before we adjourn for the Recess, and after the discussion with the local authorities?

Lord E. PERCY: I hope so, but that will depend on the discussion with the local authorities.

Mr. DALTON: 56.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether the three years' programme of the London County Council, which has been authorised by the Board, will be partly or wholly suspended as a result of the. policy announced in Circular 1371; and, if not, how large a financial liability will be transferred from the taxpayer to the London ratepayer in respect of the completion of the programme?

Mr. NAYLOR: 61.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that by the terms of the Board of Education Circular No. 1371 a serious situation will be created in London owing to the necessity of the London County Council having to provide for a deficiency of more than £300,000 a year in its present expenditure on education, and that such deficiency can only be met by in addition to the rates of about l½d. in the £, by the abandonment of the Council's present education programme, by the exclusion from the schools of children under five years of age, or by a combination of each of these methods; and whether, in these circumstances, he is prepared to withdraw the Circular?

Mr. AMMON: 66.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he agrees with the estimate of the London County Council education authority that the proposals contained in Circular 1371 will result in a loss to that body of £460,500 in 1926–27, rising to £530,875 in 1927–28; and whether, having regard to the serious menace this represents to London education, he will advise the Government to withdraw the Circular?

Lord E. PERCY: I am in consultation with the County Council on the effect of
the application of the Circular to their area, and I should prefer not to make any statement at this juncture.

Mr. DALTON: Has the three years' programme to which reference is made in my question been authorised, and is it not jeopardised by the Circular?

Lord E. PERCY: I am bound to speak under a great deal of restraint. I do not want to discuss in public the finances of local authorities when I am discussing the subject with the local authorities themselves in private. If the hon. Gentleman wants to know whether the Board approved of the programme, the facts are that the right hon. Gentleman my predecessor approved the programme in general terms, subject to and reserving his right to pass judgment upon each item separately as it came up for specific approval.

Mr. TREVELYAN: If the, right hon. Gentleman did not want to discuss the finances of local authorities in public, why did he issue the Circular in question?.

Lord E. PERCY: The answer to that question is perfectly simple. As the right hon. Gentleman knows very well, the only way I could call the local authorities into discussion and give them a basis for discussion was by issuing a Circular, and that Circular contains no criticisms of local authorities, and certainly no specific criticisms of any particular local authority.

Mr. COVE: When the Noble Lord meets the local authorities, will he be in a position to abandon the principle of a ration grant which is embodied in the Circular?

Lord E. PERCY: I am certainly not going to abandon the principle that the liability of Parliament and the Government must be defined and that Parliamentary control over money shall not be rendered nugatory by automatic expansions of expenditure which has not been approved by Parliament.

Mr. DALTON: May I ask whether the policy lying behind this Circular is to make the children of this country pay for the reduction of the Super-tax?

Mr. SPEAKER: We cannot now go into that question.

Mr. TREVELYAN: 64.
asked the President of the Board of Education, whether he is aware that the county of Northumberland is expecting to spend on elementary education alone £9,000 more next year than this year and £17,000 more in the following year, on expansion which has had the full approval of the Board of Education; and whether he proposes that the whole of this increase shall now fall upon the rates 1

Mr. RILEY: 68
asked the President of the Board of Education (1), if he is aware that the provisions of Circular 1371 may mean a reduction in the expenditure on education in the City of York of £10,000 on the comparison with 1925–26; and if he will reconsider this reduction in the interests of the children of school age in that city;
(2) if he is aware that Circular 1371 will involve an additional rate of 2d. in the £ in the town of Scarborough if the same amount as is estimated for the year 1925–26 is to be available for the year 1926–27; and will he accordingly reconsider the Circular;
(3) if he is aware that the Batley Education Committee will, as a result of Circular 1371, suffer a loss of £2,174 on the basis of the estimates, 1925–26: and whether, as such loss will fall on the local ratepayer unless the education committee diminishes the expenditure by the above-mentioned amount, he will reconsider the policy of the circular?

Mr. COVE: 74 and 75.
asked the President of the Board of Education (1) whether he is aware that the effect of Circular 1371 on Kettering will mean an addition of a 4½d. rate; and whether he will reconsider the policy of the circular;
(2) whether he is aware that in Nottingham the reduction of one per cent. on the elementary school grant involves a loss of £3,000 in addition to £2,000 reduction on account of the children under five; and whether he will reconsider this policy?

Mr. R. MORRISON: 77.
asked the President of the Board of Education if he is aware that the proposals outlined in Circular 1371 will cost the Urban District of Tottenham, approximately, £10,000 per annum, equal to a rate of 4d. in the £. without making any allowance for future educational developments; and, in
view of the fact that this district is already classified as a necessitous area, whether he will withdraw this circular?

Mr. J. HUDSON: 79.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that in Huddersfield the development of educational facilities which the Board have encouraged the local authority to project will bear as additional cost of £9,000 to the rates in 1920–27 if Circular 1371 comes into operation; and whether he will consider withdrawing it?

Mr. TAYLOR: 80.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that the system of grants embodied in Circular 1371 will, if put into operation, involve an increase of the local rates in the Borough of Lincoln of between £3,000 and £4,000 a year if the present standard of educational efficiency is to be maintained; and whether, in view of the existing high rates and the danger to educational standards, he is prepared to withdraw the circular?

Mr. HIRST: 83.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he will consider the withdrawal of Circular 1371, in view of the fact that, if made operative, it will cost the ratepayer of Bradford £14,000 a year, or 1½d. in the £ additional rates?

Mr. WH1TELEY: 84.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether, in view of the fact that the operation of Circular 1371. in the development of elementary and higher education in the county of Surrey, will involve an addition to the loan charges of £33,000. the whole of which will fall on the rates, he will reconsider the policy of the circular?

Mr. MORGAN JONES: 91.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that in Glamorganshire an additional shilling rate would be necessary to cover the reduction in grant proposed by Circular 1371 and the education commitments of the authority: and whether, in view of the gravity of the burdens already being imposed on this area on account of the incidence of other services, he will consent to the withdrawal of this circular?

Mr. BROAD: 97.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that the application of his Departmental Circular 1371 will hare the
effect of requiring an increase of 8d. in the £ of the rates in the area of the Edmonton education authority; that the rateable value in his area is but £3 per head of the population; that the yield of a 1d. rate is only 1s. 8d. per child of school age; and whether, in view of this result in this and many other areas similarly situated, he will withdraw the circular?

Lord E. PERCY: With the permission of the hon. Members, I will answer these questions together. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I do that not out of discourtesy to hon. Members, but because there is only one reply I can give to all of them.
Hon. Members must not expect me to accept without further inquiry the figures which they quote as to the financial effects of the proposals made in the circular in the particular areas referred to. I can only repeat that, as hon. Members are aware, I have arranged to discuss the whole matter with local authorities, and the proposals of the Circular are open to discussion in their detailed application to particular areas.

Mr. TREVELYAN: Had not the right hon. Gentleman in the case of Northumberland, when he made these new provisions, got: the figures of Northumberland before him, so that he, and his officials could at once tell what the effect on Northumberland would be, arid, therefore, cannot he say whether those figures are right?

Lord E. PERCY: No; I have just pointed out that, not only have I no means of knowing at this period of the year what the expenditure of local authorities next year is likely to be, but I have no means even of knowing in many eases what the expenditure of local authorities in the current year with which I am faced is likely to be.

Mr. R. MORRISON: Does the Noble Lord suggest that the Circular has not been understood by the directors of education in those areas under whose authority most of these figures have been given?

Lord E. PERCY: I do not want: to make any criticism of the figures given by directors of education, but it must,
after all, be remembered that the forecasts of expenditure for next year, which, are commonly sent to me at about this time, have in previous; years always been very much over-estimated, and a number of other questions arise, not only questions purely of ever-estimating, but many other questions, and really there is no discussion possible except on the basis of the figures themselves.

Mr. MORRISON: Then does the Noble Lord suggest that those figures given are exaggerated figures?

Lord E. PERCY: No, and the hon. Member is not going to entrap me into any accusation against officials of local authorities.

Mr. MORGAN JONES: What precisely does the Noble Lord, mean by the statement that he is going to meet the local authorities? Does, he mean to meet each separate local authority, or merely a deputation representing the whole of the local authorities?

Lord E. PERCY: I am going to meet the Association of Local Authorities next week, and, besides that the fixing of a block grant must, of course, involve discussion with every local authority whose grant is being fixed, in order to ensure that no injustice is being done.

Mr. COVE: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that this is not a block grant, but a ration grant?

Mr. AMMON: 65.
asked the President of the Board of Education the number of children under five years of age in attendance at the London County Council elementary schools?

Lord E. PERCY: The number (on registers) on the 31st March, 1925, was, approximately, 48,925.

Mr. AMMON: Does the Noble Lord appreciate that if the details of his circular are carried out, it will impose very great hardship on numbers of smaller bodies owing to the overcrowded conditions?

Lord E. PERCY: I am afraid I do not understand what the hon. Member means, and obviously other hon. Members opposite do not understand what a block grant is. A block grant fixed on the figures of a previous year, whether that
be right or wrong, which I do not discuss now, cannot possibly encourage or discourage any particular type of expenditure.

Mr. AMMON: Does the right hon. Gentleman deny that in his circular ho specifically intimates that they should exclude children under five: years of age from school?

Lord E. PERCY: That shows the hon. Member has not troubled to read the circular, because, so far from that, the circular specifically states that no such inference is to be drawn.

Mr. COVE: rose—

Mr. SPEAKER: I understand we are likely to have a debate.

Mr. COVE: But we might clear up this point? May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has not stated in A., in the Appendix, that he will penalise the authorities by taking away 30s. for each child in attendance below the age of five?

Lord E. PERCY: The hon. Member regards it as clearing up a, question by quoting one sentence of a paragraph, and carefully refraining from quoting the rest of the paragraph.

Mr. RENNIE SMITH: 70.
asked the President of the Board of Education how many children under five years of age are attending elementary schools, including nursery schools, in this country; and what reduction in numbers may be expected to follow the application of the financial policy indicated in Circular 1371?

Lord E. PERCY: On the 31st March, 1925, the number of children under five on the registers of public elementary schools was 221,797, and in nursery schools, 1,350. As regards the second part of the question, this would be affected by special local conditions, which I cannot undertake to estimate.

Mr. R. SMITH: Would the Noble Lord say whether in practice he does expect there will toe an increase of 700,000 under five in the elementary schools next year, of whether there will be a decrease?

Lord E. PERCY: I really cannot say It will depend on a number of factors. Certain local authorities have already slated that the education of children
under five docs not entail any extra expense upon them, and that the exclusion of children under five would not save them any money. In other cases, the admission or exclusion of children might make a great financial difference. My own judgment would be that in poor areas, areas where social conditions have hitherto led to early admission to schools, practically no difference will be made by this Circular,

Mr. R. SMITH: Is it; or is it not the intention of this Circular to economise on the present expenditure on elementary education, and in particular on children under five?

Lord E. PERCY: It is not the intention of this Circular to exclude anybody from school who ought to be in school.

Mr. J. BAKER: 71.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether ho is aware that in Wolverhampton two schemes, one to make provision for 150 crippled children and the other to deal with 458 delicate children now attending the elementary schools or no school at all, will, under Circular 1371, have to be abandoned; and if, under these circumstances, he is prepared to withdraw or amend the Circular?

Mr. BROMFIELD: 72.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that the Burton Education Committee have, since the issue of Circular 1371 withheld sanction to the contract for the building of a new secondary school; and whether he will reconsider the policy of the Circular?

Mr. DENNIS0N: 86.
asked the President of the Board of Education if he is aware that, in consequence of issuing Circular 1371, the Warwickshire Education Committee has decided to take no further steps in equipping a residential school for mentally defective girls; and, having regard to the urgent need for such equipment, will he exempt this work from the operation of the Circular?

Lord E. PERCY: I would refer the hon. Members to my reply of 8th December to the right hon. Member for the English Universities (Mr. Fisher), copies of which I am sending them. It was never my intention that new schemes of this kind should be undertaken in advance of the submission of programmes,
except in cases of real urgency, since such action would render futile the whole programme procedure.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, DONCASTER DISTRICT.

Mr. PALING: 58
asked the President of the Board of Education (1) what steps, if any, have been taken to provide a new elementary school in the Skellow district of the Adwick-le-Street urban area:
(2) how many children under five years of age are attending elementary schools in the borough of Doncaster and the urban districts of Bentley-with-Arksey and Adwiek-le-Street, respectively;
(3) how many places are provided in the elementary schools situate in the Garcroft and Skellow districts of the Adwick-le-Street urban district area; how many children are attending such schools; and how many children of school age are residing in the two districts'?

Lord E. PERCY: The public elementary schools in the Carcroft and Skellow district of Adwick-le-Street are recognised as providing accommodation for 1,507 children. The average number on the books for the year ended 31st March, 1925, the latest date for which figures are available, was 1,385, and the average attendance 1,198. I have no information as to the total number of children of school age residing in these two districts. Plans for a new school at Skellow to accommodate 1,040 children were approved by the Board in May last. The number of children under five years of age attending public elementary schools in the borough of Doncaster and in the urban districts of Bentley-with-Arksey and Adviek-le-Street was on the 31st March, 1925, 475. 149 and 88, respectively.

Mr. PALING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this proposed new school at Skellow has been promised for three years now, and that there has been a totally new village built since that, and does he think the prospects of getting this school have been improved by the issue of his circular?

Lord E. PERCY: As the school was approved last May, I should think it was already being built.

Mr. PALING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I have had a letter this week complaining about it, and will he go down and attend a protest meeting that is being held because nothing has been done in the matter:

Lord E. PERCY: The hon. Gentleman had better, rather than attend a protest meeting, ask the local authority.

Mr. PALING: And tell them at the same time what you are doing, I suppose?

TEACHER'S SALARIES.

Mr. TREVELYAN: 63.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether the Standing Joint Committees on teachers' salaries, in accepting and adopting the Burnham award, informed him that they did so subject to the payments of grant by the Board being continued on a basis not less than then in force; and whether he then made any comment on that proviso?

Lord E. PERCY: I have been informed that the Standing Joint Committee passed a resolution in the sense indicated by the right hon. Member, but I do not find that it was ever formally forwarded to me. It has, so far as I knew, never been claimed that anything said or done in connection with the arbitration proceedings could commit the Government or Parliament in the slightest degree to the continuance of a particular grant formula or grant system, nor could I for a moment admit such a claim if it were made; but I have every intention of making such grants to authorities as will enable them to continue the payment of the allocated scales, and I have already made it clear that such payment will constitute a condition of grant.

Mr. TREVELYAN: Will the Noble Lord go a little further into what has happened; and has he seen a statement made yesterday by Sir George Lunn, who was the spokesman for the local authorities on the Burnham Committee, in which ho says:
I tell you deliberately teachers' scales of salary are in jeopardy all over the country. Many local authorities only accepted them under duress, an I many accepted them only on condition that the Government continued to pay the grants then in force,

Lord E. PERCY: No, I have not seen that statement, and I do not accept the conclusion which the right hon. Gentle-
man appears to draw from it—that the local authorities are likely to be put into a position, by my policy, where they will not be able to pay those scales, or, in the event of being in that position, where they will not be willing to pay the scales. I intend to see that those scales and paid.

PHONETICS.

Commander BELLAIRS: 67.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that experiments conducted in certain English and Scottish elementary schools, including schools attached to important training institutions, have shown what early instruction, in rending and writing on phonetic lines conduces both to economy in education and to marked improvement in the children's work generally; and whether, in view of this, he will consider the advisability of giving, through departmental agencies, direct encouragement to the extended adoption of methods proved, wherever applied, to be successful?

Lord E. PERCY: My attention has been called to the experiments to which my hon. and gallant Friend refers, but I am not in a position at present to express a considered opinion on the merits of this method of instruction.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Mr. RAMSAY MacDONALD: May I ask, first of all, what business the Government propose to take to-night, in the event of the Eleven o'Clock Rule being suspended?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Commander Eyres Monsell): We. propose to take the Committee stage of the two Supplementary Estimates, and, I understand, it is the general wish of the House that we should proceed with the Land Settlement (Facilities) Amendment Bill. If so, we should ask the House to take the Second Reading to-night.

Mr. MacDONALD: It is proposed to take both the Votes to-day? Then may I ask what business it is proposed to take next, week?

Commander EYRES MONSELL: Monday and Tuesday: The remaining stages of the Safeguarding of Industries (Customs Duties) Bill.
Wednesday and Thursday: We propose to allot the remainder of the Sittings on Wednesday and Thursday, after the Consolidation Fund Bill has been disposed of, and if all stages of the Safeguarding of Industries Bill have been previously completed, to the Opposition for the discussion of various questions.
Friday: The Business will be announced later.

Captain BENN: Does that mean that a specific Motion will be discussed, or a general Motion for Adjournment?

Commander EYRES MONSELL: I think we will leave it to the Opposition to decide which is more convenient to them.

Mr. STEPHEN: Can the right hon. Gentleman give us any idea when the House is likely to rise for Christmas?

Commander EYRES MONSELL: I am afraid I cannot accurately state that now. but I hope before Christmas.

Captain BENN: Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly bear in mind that there may be subjects, such as Scottish Pensions, which are not covered by Votes; and, therefore, it might be an advantage to private Back Bench Members to have general matters discussed at the same time.

Commander EYRES MONSELL: I am sure we can arrange that satisfactorily.

Mr. MACPHERSON: Is it proposed to go on with the Scottish Education Bill?

Commander EYRES MONSELL: I think that depends on the wish of Scotland in the matter.

Mr. STEPHEN: Will there be an opportunity to discuss outstanding Scottish questions?

Commander EYRES MONSELL: I am afraid that is very unlikely.

Mr. HARDIE: Could the right hon. Gentleman curtail the Christmas holidays somewhat, so as to give time?

Motion made, and Question put,
That the Proceedings on Government Business he exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of the Standing Order

(Sittings of the House." —[Commander Eyres Monsell.]

The House divided: Ayes, 222; Noes, 113.

Division No. 476.]
AYES.
[4.5 p.m.


Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel
Finburgh, S.
Nicholson, Col. Rt. Hn. W.G.(Ptrsf'd.)


Agg-Gardner, Rt. Hon. Sir James T
Forestier-Walker, L.
Nield, Rt. Hon. Sir Herbert


Albery, Irving James
Forrest, W.
Nuttall. Ellis


Allen, J. Sandeman (L'pool. W. Derby)
Foxcroft, Captain C. T.
Oakley, T.


Applin, Colonel R. V. K.
Frece, Sir Walter de
Oman, Sir Charles William C.


Apsley, Lord
Fremantle, Lieut.-Colonel Francis E.
Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William


Ashley, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Wilfrid W.
Gates, Percy
Pease, William Edwin


Astbury, Lieut.-Commander F. W.
Gault, Lieut.-Col. Andrew Hamilton
Pennefather, Sir John


Atholl, Duchess of
Gee, Captain R.
Penny, Frederick George


Banks, Reginald Mitchell
Gilmour, Colonel Rt. Hon. Sir John
Peto, Basil E. (Devon, Barnstaple)


Barclay-Harvey C. M.
Glyn, Major R. G. C.
Philipson, Mabel


Barnett, Major Sir Richard
Grace, John
Pielou, D. P.


Barnston, Major Sir Harry
Grant, J. A.
Pownall, Lieut.-Colonel Assheton


Beckett, Sir Gervase (Leeds, N.)
Grattan-Doyle, Sir N.
Preston, William


Benn, sir A. S. (Plymouth, Drake)
Greene, W. P. Crawford
Price, Major C. W. M.


Berry, Sir George
Grotrian, H. Brent
Radford, E A.


Betterton, Henry B.
Guinness, Rt. Hon. Walter E.
Raine, W.


Birchall, Major J. Dearman
Hacking, Captain Douglas H.
Ramsden, E..


Bird, E. R. (Yorks, W. R., Skipton)
Hall, Lieut.-Col. Sir F. (Dulwich)
Remnant, Sir James


Bird, Sir R. B. (Wolverhampton, W.)
Hall, Capt. W. D'A. (Brecon & Rad.)
Rhys, Hon. c. A. U.


Boothby, R. J. G.
Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry
Russell, Alexander West (Tynemouth)


Bourne, Captain Robert Croft
Harland, A.
Salmon, Major I.


Brass, Captain W.
Harrison, G. J. C.
Samuel, A. M. (Surrey, Farnham)


Brassey, Sir Leonard
Headlam, Lieut.-Colonel C. M.
Sandeman, A. Stewart


Bridgeman Rt. Hon. William Clive
Henderson, Capt. R. R. (Oxf'd, Henley)
Sanderson, sir Frank


Briggs, J. Harold
Henderson, Lieut.-Col. V. L. (Bootle)
Sassoon, Sir Philip Albert Gustave D.


Briscoe. Richard George
Heneage, Lieut.-Col. Arthur p.
Savery, S, S.


Brocklebank, C. E. R.
Henn, Sir Sydney H.
Shaw, Capt. W. w. (Wilts, Westb'y)


Brooke, Brigadier-General C. R. I.
Hennessy, Major J. R. G.
Sheffield, Sir Berkeley


Broun-Lindsay, Major H.
Hills, Major John Walter
Sinclair, Col. T. (Queen's Univ., Belf'st.)


Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Newbury)
Hilton, Cecil
Skelton, A. N.


Buckingham, Sir H.
Hoare, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon, Sir S. J. G.
Slaney, Major p. Kenyon


Bullock, Captain M.
Hong, Rt. Hon. Sir D.(St. Marylebone)
Smith, R. W. (Aherd'n & Kinc'dine. C.)


Burman, J. B.
Hope, Capt. A. O. J. (Warw'k, Nun.)
Smith-Carington, Neville W.


Burton, Colonel H. W.
Hopkins, J. W. W.
Smithers. Waldron


Butler, Sir Geoffrey
Hopkinson, A. (Lancaster, Mossley)
Somerville, A. A. (Windsor)


Cadogan, Major Hon. Edward
Horlick, Lieut.-Colonel J. N.
Spender Clay, Colonel H.


Campbell, E. T.
Howard, Captain Hon. Donald
Sprot, Sir Alexander


Cayzer, Sir C. (Chester, City)
Hume, Sir G. H.
Stanley, Col. Hon. G. F. (Will'sden, E.)


Cazalet, Captain Victor A.
Huntingfield, Lord
Stanley, Lord (Fylde)


Cecil, Rt. Hon. sir Evelyn (Aston)
Jackson, Lieut.-Colonel Hon. F. S.
Steel, Major Samuel Strang


Chadwick, Sir Robert Burton
Jacob. A. E.
Storry Deans, R.


Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. N, (Ladywood)
James, Lieut.-Colonel Hon. Cuthbert
Streatfeild, Captain S. R.


Chapman, Sir S.
Joynson-Hicks, Rt. Hon. Sir William
Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)


Charteris, Brigadier-General J.
Kennedy, A. R. (Preston)
Tasker, Major R. Inigo


Chilcott, Sir Warden
Kidd, J. (Linlithgow)
Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, South)


Christie, J. A.
King, Captain Henry Douglas
Tinne, J. A.


Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer
Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement
Titchfield, Major the Marquess of


Churchman, Sir Arthur C.
Lamb, J. Q.
Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement


Clarry, Reginald George
Lane-Fox, Colonel George R.
Vaughan-Morgan, Col. K. P.


Clayton, G. C.
Locker-Lampson, G. (Wood Green)
Waddington, R.


Cobb, Sir Cyril
Locker-Lampson, Com. O. (Handsw'th)
Wallace, Captain O. E.


Couper, J. B.
Loder, J. de V.
Ward, Lt.-Col. A. L. (Kingston-on-Hull)


Courthope, Lieut.-Col. Sir George L.
Lord, Walter Greaves-
Waterhouse, Captain Charles


Cowan, Sir Win. Henry (Islington, N.)
Luce, Major-Gen, Sir Richard Harman
Watson, sir F. (Pudsey and Otley)


Craig, Ernest (Chester, Crewe)
Lumley, L. R.
Watson, Rt. Hon. W. (Carlisle)


Craik, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry
Mac Andrew, Charles Glen
Watts, Dr. T.


Crook, C. W.
McDonnell, Colonel Hon. Angus
Wells, S. R.


Crooke, J. Smedley (Deritend)
Macintyre, Ian
White, Unit.-Colonel G. Dairymple


Crookshank, Cpt. H.(Lindsey, Gainsbro)
McLean, Major A.
Williams, Com. C. (Devon, Torquay)


Curzon, Captain Viscount
Macnaghten, Hon. Sir Malcolm
Williams. C. P. (Denbigh, Wrexham)


Dalkeith. Earl of
McNeill, Rt. Hon. Ronald John
Williams, Herbert G. (Reading)


Dean Arthur Wellesley
Macquisten, F. A.
Winder-dive. Lieut.-Colonel George


Drewe, C.
Manningham-Buller, Sir Mervyn
Wise, Sir Fredric


Edmondson. Major A. J.
Margesson, Captain D.
Womersley, W. J.


Edwards. John H. (Accrington)
Marriott, Sir J. A. R.
Wood, S. C. (Somerset, Bridgwater)


Elliot Captain Walter E.
Meyer, Sir Frank
Wood, E. (Chesfr, Stalyb'ge & Hyde)


Elved'en, Viscount
Milne, J. S. Wardlaw-
Wood, Sir Kinqsley (Woolwich, W,).


Erskine, Lord (Somerset, Weston-s.-M.)
Mitchell, Sir W. Lane (Streatham)
Woodcock, Colonel H. C.


Erskine, James Malcolm Monteith
Moore, Lieut.-Colonel T. C. R. (Ayr)
Worthington-Evans. Rt. Hon. Sir L.


Evans, Captain A. (Cardiff, South)
Morrison, H. (Wilts, Salisbury)
Yerburgh, Major Robert D. T.


Everard, W. Lindsay
Murchison. C. K.



Fairfax Captain J. G.
Nail, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Joseph
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Falle Sir Bertram G.
Nelson, Sir Frank
Commander B. Eyres Mousell and


Fermoy, Lord
Nicholson, O. (Westminster)
Colonel Gibbs.


Fielden, E. B.




NOES.


Adamson, Rt. Hon. W. (Fife, West)
Harney, E. A.
Scrymgeour, E.


Alexander, A. V. (Sheffield, Hillsbro')
Hartshorn, Rt. Hon. Vernon
Scurr, John


Ammon, Charles George
Hayes, John Henry
Shaw, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Preston)


Baker, J. (Wolverhampton, Bilston)
Henderson, Rt. Hon. A. (Burnley)
Shiels, Dr. Drummond


Baker, Walter
Henderson, T. (Glasgow)
Short, Alfred (Wednesbury;


Barker, G. (Monmouth, Abertillery)
Hirst, W. (Bradford, South)
Smith, Ben (Bermondsey, Rotherhithe)


Barnes, A.
Hore-Belisha, Leslie
Smith, H. 8. Lees- (Keighley)


Barr, J.
Hutchison, Sir Robert (Montrose)
Smith, Rennie (Penistone)


Batey, Joseph
Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)
Snell, Harry


Bonn Captain Wedgwood (Leith)
Kelly, W. T.
Snowden, Rt. Hon. Philip


Bowerman, Rt. Hon. Charts W.
Kennedy, T.
Spencer, G. A. (Broxtowe)


Briant, Frank
Kenworthy, Lt.-Com. Hon. Joseph M.
Stamford, T. W.


Broad, F. A.
Lansbury, George
Stephen, Campbell


Bromley, J.
Lawson, John James
Stewart, J. (St. Rollox)


Cape, Thomas
Lee, F.
Sutton, J. E.


Cluse, W. S.
Livingstone, A. M.
Taylor, B. A.


Clynes, Rt. Hon. John R.
Lunn, William
Thomas, Rt. Hon. James H. (Derby)


Collins, Sir Godfrey (Greenock)
MacDonald, Rt. Hon. J. R. (Aberavon)
Thomas, Sir Robert John (Anglesey)


Compton, Joseph
MacLaren, Andrew
Thomson, Trevelyan (Middlesbro. W.)


Connolly, M.
McLean, Major A.
Thurtle, E.


Cove, W. G.
Macpherson, Rt. Hon. James I.
Tinker, John Joseph


Dalton, Hugh
March, S.
Trevelyan, Rt. Hon. C. P.


Davies, Evan (Ebbw Vale)
Montague, Frederick
Walsh. Rt. Hon. Stephen


Day, Colonel Harry
Morrison, R. C. (Tottenham, N.)
Watson, W. M. (Dunfermline)


Dennison, R.
Murnin, H.
Watts-Morgan, Lt.-Col. D. (Rhondda)


Dunnico. H.
Naylor, T. E.
Webb, Rt. Hon. Sidney


Evans, Capt. Ernest (Welsh Univer.)
Oliver, George Harold
Wedgwood, Rt. Hon. Josiah


Fenby, T. D.
Paling, W.
Weir, L. M.


Garro-Jones, Captain G. M.
Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan)
Welsh, J. C.


Gibbins, Joseph
Pethick-Lawrence, F. W.
Wilkinson, Ellen C.


Gillett, George M.
Ponsonby, Arthur
Williams, T. (York. Don Valley)


Gosling, Harry
Potts, John S.
Wilson, C. H. (Sheffield, Attercliffe)


Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)
Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)
Wilson, R. J. (Jarrow)


Graham, Rt. Hon. Wm. (Edin., Cent.)
Riley, Ben
Windsor, Walter


Grenfell, D. R. (Glamorgan)
Ritson, J.
Wright, W.


Grundy, T. W.
Robinson, W. C. (Yorks, W.R., Elland)



Hall, C. H. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Rose, Frank H.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—


Hamilton, Sir R. (Orkney & Shetland)
Saklatvala, Shapurji
Mr. Warne and Mr. Charles


Hardie, George D.
Salter, Dr. Alfred
Edwards.


Question put, and agreed to.

WITHDRAWAL OF STRANGERS.

OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. NEIL MACLEAN: I want to raise a question of which I gave notice last week, and I hope the House will bear with me if I am a little longer than is usually the case on what is regarded as a point of Order. As this is a matter which, I think, affects procedure in this House, I am certain the House will be quite willing to give me at least a few .minutes in which, to put before it a point upon which I desire your ruling, Mr. Speaker. On Wednesday last week, it will be remembered, we had during the night a certain incident, which gave rise to what is called by the Press a "Secret Session" of this House, and it was also described on the cover of the daily issue of the OFFICIAL REPORT as a "Secret Session." I want to state, first of all, that that is an incorrect description. The Motion which I moved in the House was a Motion that strangers withdraw. The Chairman asked if I was going to move for a. Secret Session, and I said "No." The terms upon which strangers have to withdraw are practically laid down in the Standing Order, and it is that strangers must
withdraw. The fact that messengers were going about this House showed it was not a Secret Session.

Mr. SPEAKER: Perhaps I may shorten the matter by saying that that question of a Secret Session may be dismissed entirely. That was a term invented during the War, when the Defence of the Realm Act was in operation for a particular purpose. It has no relevance to our present subject.

Mr. MACLEAN: I have already assumed that, because I had finished that point. I hope, therefore, that that particular description since your ruling, Mr. Speaker, will be expunged.
The other matter which I want the House to consider is the question who are the. strangers who are asked to withdraw? The House of Commons Records, like those of Erskine May. are particularly keen upon that point. It is there laid down that Clerks and Officers are not strangers; but Erskine May goes further, and says that
Peers who may be sitting in the Peers' Gallery are not strangers.
He also says that ladies sitting in the Ladies' Gallery are not strangers, and
that when strangers have withdrawn from other parts of the House, ladies may remain. That being so, I want to find out from yon, Sir, who are to be included in this category and description? During that sitting, when strangers had withdrawn, we discovered that the Official Reporters who belong to this House had also been ordered to retire. I found out later that, not only were the Official Reporters ordered to withdraw, but that the two messengers who look after the Reporters' Gallery were also ordered to retire, while the other messengers were free to move about the House. I should like to know why those messengers were ordered to withdraw? But that is by the way. The Official Reporters were described by the Chairman as being included in the category of strangers. Now, Sir, there is a specific Resolution in the OFFICIAL REPORT in regard to those who officially report our Debates. The Motion which was moved in this House to take over the reporters who were previously employed by private contractors to report the Debates was proposed in 1908 by the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. Hobhouse. The Motion was moved on a Token Vote for £5. In the course of his speech, Mr. Hobhouse outlined what were the proposals of the Government in regard to these reporters— proposals which, I may say, were accepted by, and agreed to, by this House without a Division. What Mr. Hobhouse said was this:
The proposals the Government make to the House are these; that there shall be a staff of reporters, 10 in number, who shall be servants of the House and engaged at an ample remuneration. Then to control that staff of reporters there shall be a chief of staff… . These are to be servants of the House, and they are to be under the authority of Mr. Speaker.
The Token Vote for £5 was adopted without a Division, which carried also the proposal of the Government of that day, and meant that the House agreed that the reporters were to report the Debates officially, and were to become servants or officers of this House. I am going further, Sir. I hold in my hand a bound copy of a volume of the OFFICIAL REPORT OF DEBATES, which is sent to every Member. Every bound copy contains not only a list of the Members of the Government, but also, on the page immediately
preceding the first page of the report, a list of the principal officers of the House of Commons. In this list I find as a principal officer of the House is the Editor of the OFFICIAL DEBATES, W. Turner Perkins, Esq., and the Assistant Editor T. H. Parr, Esq. I submit, Sir, that this shows that these and the staff are recognised as officers of the House. They are paid by a Vote which is passed by this House, and they appear in a list of officers of the House; consequently they cannot be considered strangers.
The last point I want to make is this: When the Press had all withdrawn, efforts were made to get the reporters back—that is the Official Reporters. [HON. MEMBERS: "By whom?"] I am not concerned by whom. I am stating a point here upon it, and I want a ruling. We desired that the Official Reporters should, be brought back. We were told that, once having had strangers taken from the Gallery, the reporters being included in "strangers," there was no precedent whereby these strangers—including reporters, or reporters by themselves— could be brought back to the House. I have been fortunate enough in my researches into this case to discover a precedent which seemed to be overlooked by the Chairman. It is a precedent of 1875—far enough back; but many precedents that are used in this House by the Chairman and by you, Mr. Speaker, date further back. The privileges of Members of this House are governed by precedents that go very much further back than 50 years. The precedent I want to mention is when Mr. Biggar called the notice of the Speaker to the fact that there were strangers in the Gallery. The then Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, and several other notables were there, and they, along with others, were compelled to withdraw. Immediately they had withdrawn, a Debate arose on the Motion of Mr. Disraeli, seconded by the Marquess of Hartington. I am not going into the Debate, and only quote the Resolution, which became the finding of the House. The Resolution was this:
Resolved. That the rule for the exclusion of strangers be suspended during the present sitting of the House. — (Mr. Disraeli.)

After the lapse of about 20 minutes strangers were re-admitted."

That surely is conclusive that precedents do exist, and that the Chairman was ruling wrongly when, on Wednesday last, he said that no precedent exists for bringing back strangers. I am going further in regard to the Press. During the War, when we held five different Secret Sessions, there was a certain procedure adopted. Strangers were observed, and after strangers had withdrawn from the Gallery, a direct Motion had to be made that the remainder of the Session be held as a Secret Session.

Mr. SPEAKER: I have already said that the fact that such a Motion was made is not relevant. It was made for the purpose of the Defence of the Realm Regulations, which prescribed certain pains and penalties.

Mr. MACLEAN: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, you did not allow me to go on, for by this time I would have finished the point I was making. My point was not in regard to the Secret Sessions, but with regard to the Press. What I wanted to show was that strangers having withdrawn, and the House having gone into Secret Session, the only members of the Press Gallery whom I could get to know were given tickets which admitted them, if the House wanted a report of the proceedings of the Secret Session, were the Official Reporters. The other Press men did not receive such tickets for admission to the Secret Session. If this House thought it was necessary that a record or report should be made of the Secret Session, the reporters were there. These are the facts, and I submit, Mr. Speaker, that they quite clearly show: First, that the Official Reporters who report the Debates that are published in the OFFICIAL REPORT are officers of this House, and ought not to be asked to retire when strangers are observed. Secondly, that there is a precedent existing whereby strangers, once having been asked to withdraw, can be brought back again. Further, that the ruling given by the Chairman on Wednesday evening last was in contradiction to the existing Standing Order, to the previous findings of this House, as also to the precedents both in Erskine May. and in the records and precedents of this House.

Mr. SPEAKER: With regard to the precedent quoted by the hon. Member— 1875, I think, was the date that he gave—I have only to observe that that period was before the present Standing Order was in existence, so that the circumstances were quite different. There was no Motion then required to order the withdrawal of strangers. With regard to his other points, I do not traverse any of the citations that he has made, but I am quite unable to accept his conclusion. Until the Standing Order is altered, or until I have some order from the House, I am bound, and the Chairman is bound, to follow the previous practice. The fact that the staff of "Hansard" was taken over by this House certainly cannot be taken to override the Standing Order or the previous practice of the House. If the House had so desired, it would have said so at that time, but it did not.

Mr. MACLEAN: I submit that the practice of this House does not bear upon people who are brought in newly under the payment of this House. The fact that the Resolution of the House which was passed made the staff servants of this House on the wording of the Financial Secretary, and brought them under the category of officers; the fact that every volume of the OFFICIAL REPORT published describes the chief of the staff as among the principal officers of this House; and, furthermore, the very fact that during a period when we had a Defence of the Realm Act those were the only individuals who received tickets of admission—if it were necessary for them to be admitted— to the secret Session, such as were given to the Serjeant-at-Arms and to the other officers of the House shows that these men are looked upon as officers of the House; and the decisions given by this House affected only those things that were governed by circumstances which existed prior to the taking over by the House of the reporters.

Mr. SPEAKER: I do not deny the points that the hon. Member has cited, but I am quite unable to accept his conclusions.

Mr. MACLEAN: With regard to the precedent I quoted regarding the re-admission of strangers when it has been moved, do you rule that is not competent now, although it was competent in 1875?

Mr. SPEAKER: Yes, I do. In 1875. and on that particular occasion when Mr. Biggar spied strangers, there was no Motion put to the House. The Gallery was ipso facto cleared. The House at a later date regularised matters by means of the present Standing Order.

Mr. MACLEAN: Was not the procedure that was adopted at that time by Mr. Disraeli the moving of the suspension of the Standing Order, and is not that a Motion competent at any time?

Mr. SPEAKER: Not without notice.

BILLS PRESENTED.

POLICE PENSIONS BILL.

"to increase the rateable deductions to be made from the pay of the police and to authorise, in certain circumstances, the return of rateable deductions in the case of members of police forces retired or dismissed after the thirtieth day of June, nineteen hundred and nineteen," presented by Sir WILLIAM JOYNSON-HICKS; supported by Captain Hacking; to be read a Second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 275.]

PUBLIC HEALTH (SMOKE, ETC., ABATEMENT) BILL,

"to amend the law relating to smoke nuisances and noxious or offensive gases; and for other purposes connected therewith," presented by Dr. SALTER; supported by Mr. Viant, Dr. Shicls, Mr. Barr, Mr. Broad, Mr. Rhys Davies, Mr. Dunnico, Mr. Stewart, Mr. David Williams, Miss Wilkinson, Mr. Warne, and Mr. Thomas Henderson; to be road a Second time upon Thursday next, and to be printed. [Bill 276.]

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.

That they have agreed to,—

Ireland (Confirmation of Agreement) Bill, without Amendment.

Glasgow Boundaries Bill, with Amendments.

BEDFORDSHIRE, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, AND HUNTINGDONSHIRE ELECTRICITY BILL [Lords].

Reported, with Amendments; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

CHAIRMEN'S PANEL.

Mr. WILLIAM NICHOLSON reported from the Chairmen's Panel; That they had appointed Mr. Short to act as Chairman of Standing Committee A (in respect of the Coastguard Bill [Lords]); and Sir Cyril Cobb to act as Chairman of Standing Committee B (in respect of the Government of India (Civil Services) Bill [Lords]).

Report to lie upon the Table.

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).

STANDING COMMITTEE A.

Mr. WILLIAM NICHOLSON reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee A: Mr. Smithers; and had appointed in substitution: Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister.

STANDING COMMITTEE B.

Mr. WILLIAM NICHOLSON further reported from the Committee; That they had added the following Fifteen Members to Standing Committee B (in respect of the Government of India (Civil Services) Bill [Lords]): Mr. Walter Baker, Brigadier-General Charteris, Sir Henry Craik, Major Edmondson, Mr. Hore-Belisha, Major-General Sir Alfred Knox, Mr. Wardlaw-Milne, Mr. Pilcher, Sir John Power, Mr. Scurr, Mr. Snell, Mr. Solicitor-General, Mr. Spoor, Sir Victor Warrender, and Earl Winterton.

Mr. WILLIAM NICHOLSON further reported from the Committee; That they had added the following Member to Standing Committee B: Mr. Campbell.

Reports to lie upon the Table.

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY.

Considered in Committee.

[CAPTAIN FITZROY in the Chair.]

CIVIL SERVICES SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1925–26.

UNCLASSIFIED SERVICE. COAL MINING INDUSTRY SUBVENTION.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £9,000,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1926, for a Subvention in Aid of Wages in the Coal Mining Industry.

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Churchill): I must begin by apologising to the Committee that the accidental course of public business has rendered it necessary for me to do what I think in technical parlance is called a "double turn" or a "double shift."
This Supplementary Estimate asks the Committee to vote an additional sum of £9,000,000 for the subvention in aid of wages in the coal trade. Wages in the coal trade are calculated by a very complicated method. Every stage has been the result of agreements and disputes between the masters and the men. I shall not attempt to explain this system to the House. There are many Members who understand it intimately, but it is not necessary for the Committee as a whole to understand the system in order to take the decision for which the Government now ask. It will be sufficient to say that in each district the difference between the expenses other than wages on the one hand, and receipts on the other, is calculated over a period of three months. This calculation is made in the fourth month, and the result is divided between wages and profits in the ratio of 87 to 13, and this result constitutes the wage rate for the fifth month. The wage resulting from this process is called the ascertained wage. This wage is also regulated by a minimum standard. When the wage falls below the minimum, all profits, in the first instance, tend to disappear, and thereafter a loss is incurred by the owners which becomes
greater the deeper and longer the depression endures. Such is the system. I trust I have explained it compendiously and not incorrectly.
From the moment that the artificial advantage of the occupation of the Ruhr by the French ceased to operate, in the early part of this year, the coal trade sank steadily into a deepening depression. All last summer prices fell to levels which carried the ascertained wage so far below the minimum standard that very heavy losses were continuously sustained by the owners. The owners demanded reconsideration of the minimum basis, and they also demanded a further reduction in wages in accordance with the increasing depression. The miners replied by refusing even to discuss a reduction of wages or a lengthening of hours, and they intimated, not in so many words, but that is the effect of the attitude they adopted, that if there was not enough profit to maintain the wages and conditions of the industry, and to maintain the increased numbers which had come into the industry in the last few years, the difference, whatever it was—the loss— should be made up by the taxpayer. In this attitude the miners were supported by other trade unions, and the public were therefore invited either to pay the adverse difference between the ascertained wage and the minimum or to face a general strike, or what was very largely a general strike, of organised labour.
There is this to be said about a general strike of organised labour; whoever wins, every class, particularly the poorest class, must lose; the whole trade and finance of the country are dislocated; very heavy expenses are cast upon the Government; heavy new taxation has to be imposed; the markets on which we depend for our export trade would be eagerly and rapidly occupied by our rivals; all chance of returning prosperity would be destroyed, probably for several years; unemployment would certainly continue at a far higher level. In the face of all these evils it must he generally agreed amongst sensible people that such a struggle ought only to be entered upon when it is absolutely certain that every other way, every other resource, has been exhausted, and that there are no other means by which the community can be saved from what is a catastrophe.
The Government thought, moreover, at that juncture, the end of July, that they saw possibilities of actual trade revival. We did not feel justified in predicting it, but we believed from the evidence submitted to us from many quarters that there were good probabilities of an improvement, of a diminution in unemployment, of an improvement in world prices in relation to our own, and, in consequence, an appreciable bridging of the gap between the ascertained wage and the minimum wage. We were also impressed with the fact that the country as a whole was not sufficiently informed about the character and immense consequences of such a struggle as that with which it was confronted. It is quite clear that a conflict of this kind, launched in this way, might easily cease to be a mere ordinary industrial dispute about wages and conditions and might assume a character altogether different from such industrial disputes. If that were to ensue, then it-is quite clear that such a conflict between the community on the one hand, with the Government at its head, and many of the great trade unions on the other, could only end in one way, namely, by the community, at whatever cost, emerging victorious over an organised section of its citizens, however valuable, important, and even numerous that section was. We considered, therefore, that should such a struggle be found to be inevitable at the very last moment, it was of supreme importance that it should only be undertaken under conditions which would not expose the nation needlessly or wantonly to perils the gravity of which cannot possibly be over-estimated. We therefore decided to postpone the crisis in the hope of averting it, or, if not of averting it, of coping effectually with it when the time came. Accordingly, we entered-upon an agreement with the employers to pay them for a period of nine months the adverse difference, if any, between the ascertained wage and the minimum wage, whatever that might be.
Meanwhile, we set up a Royal Commission to examine into the whole position of this once prosperous and triumphant trade, now reduced to beg the nation for a dole and to extort a ransom from the mass of the citizens of all classes under the threat of bringing the whole business of the country to a standstill. The system we adopted was the only one possible in the urgent circumstances
which then existed; but even if a much longer time had been available I doubt very much whether any better system could have been devised. The method by which this subvention is paid has, in the first place, great administrative simplicity. It follows the precedent set by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) in the Coalition Government of 1921. You may say it was a settlement on the Lloyd George model, with some revisions and improvements suggested by later experience in regard to the limits of the profits of the owners from the subvention. The system was well understood; it fitted exactly into the method by which the wages are calculated in the industry and which the industry was accustomed to; it needed hardly any additional staff at the Ministry of Mines or at the Treasury to attend to it; it avoided any imposition of the dead hand of Government control. It in no way removed the coal mining industry from the pressure of economic facts. It merely enabled that industry to be carried on by those mines which were not the least prosperous, in contact with economic reality, during a period of acute, but possibly exceptional, depression.
We had no means of forecasting accurately the cost of the subvention on this basis. Accordingly, we carefully avoided attempting to forecast it. In the White Paper which I presented to Parliament we contented ourselves with giving only the maximum and minimum figures of cost between which we believed the truth would lie. We stated the minimum at £7,000,000, on a certain basis, with a clear indication that we were sure it would be more than that; we stated the maximum, on another basis, at £24,000,000, with a strong implication that we hoped it would not be so bad as that. If to-day, with four and a-half months' more knowledge, I am called upon to forecast the total cost of this subvention, I should estimate it at between £20,000,000 and £21,000,000 for the nine months, of which £19,000,000 will fall in the currency of this financial year. To be quite frank, that is £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 more than I personally hoped, on the indications and data which were submitted to the Treasury and which were all that were available to submit to the Treasury in August.
Let us see in what way the subvention works. What are the causes, for instance, which increase or diminish the burden on the Exchequer? The first month for which the subvention was payable was August. The ascertained wage of August was fixed by the results arrived at in April, May, and June. June was the worst month recorded up to then. July is much better, but is much better for a very uncomforting reason, namely, that the apprehensions of a strike led to a feverish increase in output at the expense of August, and once the idea of a strike was out of the way the accumulated stocks which had been built up were rapidly drawn upon, and employment which had risen in apprehension of the strike rapidly fell off in large numbers after that apprehension had disappeared.
The subvention for September was calculated on May, June and July, and that subvention was helped by the fictitious amelioration of July. When the time came to calculate the subvention for October, the exceptionally evil month of June was reinforced by the even more evil month of August and constituted a very adverse figure for October. We began to feel the effect of a new factor, the subsidised export trade which we are running at a loss, but on an increasing scale. This began to augment employment artificially, prices hardened, output increased and a larger number of men began to be employed or were more fully employed. The number of men stated in the unemployment returns for the coalmining industry do not distinguish between unemployed and under-employed.
Of course, this increase of employment helps the country in many ways, but it does not help the Exchequer so far as the subvention is concerned. These manshifts have to be paid for on the basis of the gap proved to exist between the ascertained rate and the minimum rate in accordance with the bad months of June, July and August, in which the ascertained wage fell far below the minimum. This gap we have filled on the basis of a larger number of men than were in employment before. The same conditions were observed in November, and will probably operate in December as well. The improvement in trade and employment at the present time aggravates the cost to the Exchequer. It
aggravates that cost at the present time, although it will reduce it at a later stage. Of course, the condition of the trade in November was better than that of October, and with the late seasonable weather which may return, and which from the Exchequer point of view we should welcome, the demand for household coal will improve the conditions of the trade.
Therefore it is not impossible that December will be better than November, and it is even likely that January, February and March may show progressive improvement. Such improvement in the coal trade, if it takes place, should be attended by increased employment, and this increase of the number of man shifts will cost us more. On the other hand, as the three months' period moves forward the basis of the ascertained wage will gradually become more favourable, and we may expect the subventions for February, March and April to be less than those of November, December and January, although there may be more miners in employment and more man shifts worked. There is one factor which will operate increasingly favourably and counteract the adverse tendency. If the conditions continue to improve, the Exchequer would benefit. If, for instance, this system went on, the Exchequer would benefit in May, June and July, but as the subvention is to stop in May, we shall not get the benefit of the improvement. Therefore we are in the curious position of having to pay more because trade was bad in August, and more because it has improved in November, although we shall get the benefit later on. I am merely stating these facts to the House and the country as it is my duty to do, and I am not attempting to adorn them, if, indeed, they are capable of adornment, in any way.
Now let us see where the subvention has gone. When the White Paper was issued in July it was described as a subvention in aid of wages, but this assertion was sharply challenged from the Labour Benches. I have no doubt that there are exceptional cases, and no one can possibly frame statistics or general statements which apply to the various fortunes and characteristics of individual mines. There are all sorts of exceptions to every rule, and to every scheme which you try to put forward,
but the fact remains that, on balance, up to the end of October over 90 per cent. of the subvention had gone as a direct subvention to wages. Over the whole mass of the coalfields dealing with them as a whole—I cannot trace an individual mine or even an individual district— over the whole area of the coalfields scarcely any profits have yet been made by the owners, and they have just been able to keep themselves going. [A laugh.] I can assure hon. Members opposite that this is not a laughing matter. It is quite clear that if we had to proceed on the basis of no reduction of wages being accepted by the men and no subvention by the State, the owners would have lost in the nine months' period between £10,000,000 or £.15,000,000, and it seems very unlikely that any body of private persons would have been able to bear losses on that scale.

Mr. MacLAREN: How are those losses computed?

Mr. CHURCHILL: They are worked out on the methods agreed upon between the owners and the miners which for years have always operated when calculating the profits in this great industry. Joint accountants are employed, and everything has been examined on both sides with the utmost refinement and in great detail. It is clear that in August we were confronted either with the owners closing down, or the men taking lower wages, or the Exchequer paying a subvention. No other solution which I could see was open to us then. Let the Committee observe that the subvention has not led to any appreciable reopening of the pits.
Since the 1st of August, 156 pits, normally employing 32,000 wage-earners, have been opened or reopened, but in the same time 111 pits, normally employing 26,000 wage-earners, have been closed. Bearing in mind the improvement which has taken place in the trade, this is clear proof that the subvention has not given support to the uneconomic mines at the expense of the economic mines. What has happened since August, according to the latest figures which are available, is that the owners, on balance and on the whole, have made practically no profit, although there has been a considerable improvement in employment. Unemploy-
ment still continues at a very high and painful rate, for which the State is paying a heavy bill.

Mr. MacLAREN: Were the royalties paid during that period?

Mr. CHURCHILL: The royalties are not an appreciable part of this subvention, and I do not see how the situation would be altered, for instance, if the £6,000,000, or whatever sum is paid in royalties, were gathered in by the State instead of by private persons. I do not see how that would affect the actual finance of the coal trade. Of course, if the State bought the royalties and made a present of them to the miners, there would be a considerable difference, but no one has suggested that. These facts, as now disclosed, and as they appear before us, ought surely to give rise to hard thinking on the part of everyone who is engaged in the coal-mining industry.
This brings me to the consideration of two larger questions to which I must refer before I sit down. The first question is: What will happen in May when the subvention ends? On this point I can only make a few general observations. The coal trade, as I have shown, has been steadily improving in the last three months, and this improvement may continue into the spring. We are all hoping that it will, and so far there is no sign whatever that the steady progress is slackening; in fact, the last week's output is the highest since the middle of May, and it is the first time since then that the figure of 5,000,000 tons has been exceeded. But we must not delude ourselves by thinking that even if oar best hopes are realised the gap between export prices and the cost of production will disappear. Without the subvention the average loss per ton on coal exported from South Wales in October was over 3s. 5d., and from Durham over 2s. 10d. We are regaining our export trade, and we are recovering our position in markets in which we used to reign supreme, which were temporarily lost, but we are only regaining them by the contradictory and futile method of selling at a loss. You can always increase your trade by selling at a loss. There are all sorts of ways of doing it. All sorts of suggestions have been constantly reaching the Exchequer
for improving trade by doing business at a loss, but that process is only comparable to trying to quench one's thirst by drinking salt water.
Very few of the 400 mines in Northumberland and Durham, and fewer still of the 700 mines in South Wales, are making any profit at all on the basis of the old wages and costs. It may be that, if things go well, and the improvement continues, the gap will be narrowed, that it will become more manageable; indeed, it is probable that it will be more manageable, more nearly bridgable, in April than it was in July; but it will still be there. In the meantime, we expect the Report of the Royal Commission. The Commission is not composed, as the Saw-key Commission was, of partisans. [Interruption.] That is a perfectly legitimate way of constituting a commission. There are two ways of constituting a commission. One is to have a commission which represents the different competing interests affected, with an impartial chairman— a sort of omnibus commission. The other is to set up a commission of the kind that we have now decided upon—an impartial body of four men of the highest standing and of wide experience in affairs, and to give them every facility for conducting their inquiry. From their Report we expect some important assistance.

Mr. MacLAREN: You are very sanguine.

Mr. CHURCHILL: The hon. Gentleman seems to he a great pessimist. I hope he will not confine his utterances to croaks of pessimism, but that, during the course of the Debate, he will favour us with constructive schemes for meeting a problem which puzzles and engages all our minds, and in the solution of which all have an interest—none more than those who sit in that quarter of the House.
From the Sankey Commission there emerged a bewildering diversity of judgment. Some held that everything was wrong with the industry; some held that nothing was wrong; and every variety of intermediate opinion found expression. From the present Commission the Government expect a definite pronouncement on the question whether there is anything fundamentally wrong with the present organisation of the industry in
any branch, productive or distributive, and whether there is any remedy, if that be the case, which the Government can provide by legislative action or otherwise. There is another thing that we hope for from the Royal Commission. We hope to get a judgment on points at issue which will clarify the situation and enable the public to judge, much more clearly than was then possible, the merits of the dispute in July. Were the owners justified, for instance, in seeking to reduce wages? Were the men, for instance, justified in refusing lower wages and longer hours? Ought one side or the other to give way, or is there any middle course?
We shall have, too, as I have said, the guidance of actual experience for some months of the owners' proposals. In July, the owners were making losses, but, even so, the export trade was contracted. They claimed that it was necessary to go to even lower prices in order to turn the tide and hold the market—how much lower, we could only guess. In May we shall know, and a sufficient series of results will be placed before us to enable us to discuss these questions with definite, precise figures before us, That, again, will be an advantage. Thirdly, there is the possibility—indeed, the certainty, if the trade continues upwards during the later months of the subvention—that the owners may make comfortable profits. That, too, would ease the situation. Last July, after months of losses, they were looking down a slope at the bottom of which there appeared only ruin if they kept the pits open; but in the spring there may be some money in the industry that can be put back—and the Government and the public will expect it to be put back—to help to carry the industry over the difficult time which lies ahead.
For all these reasons, difficult as the situation will be in the spring, it will be less, possibly far less, difficult than it was in July. Whatever that situation may be, it is one which will have to be faced. The economic laws, which care nothing for parties, or classes, or politics, do not permit that this great industry, which is the foundation of our industrial prosperity, should become indefinitely a pensioner upon the other industries that it has created. Is it too much to hope that all parties will try to get together
and grapple with the problem for themselves? Is it too much to expect the coal trade, who boasted that they were able to settle all their differences if they were left alone, will make an effort to return to their old independent position? The time is short. The backbone, of the export trade is long contracts, and it is almost impossible to make long contracts with the threat and menace of a sudden and violent breakdown and cessation hanging over us in May. There is no more deadly foe to prosperity, to the employment of scores of thousands of men, to a revival of pits around which whole communities are languishing without the means of livelihood—there is no more deadly foe than this uncertainty which is hanging over the trade at the present time.
Is it really impossible for both sides, owners and men, to enlarge their outlook, to recognise that their real interests are identical, that, whatever divergencies there are, they have a common body of interest? Is it impossible for them to range themselves side by side, and, by mutual forbearance and temporary common sacrifices, to avert the catastrophe which is threatening both equally, and in which the general prosperity of this hard-pressed, heavily burdened community is also involved? Is that a vain hope? I do not feel it possible to believe that a great body of sensible Britons will let the months slip away and condemn themselves—their community above all others, their industry above all others—to a further period of misery and depression, with the increasing certainty that ground that is lost will not be lost only for the time, but may be permanently occupied by other competitors and by other competing sources of power.
The second question with which I will deal is one which, when we discussed these matters on that August night, was a burning one. What does the Committee think now, in December, of the decision which we then took in order to avert a struggle? How does that decision look in the light of the present situation, in the light of our knowledge? Does it seem a wiser or a more foolish decision? Does it seem a more prudent or a more reckless decision? Does it seem a far-sighted or a shortsighted decision? Do we., on a general survey, on the reflection which has come to us since, regret
the course we took? Does it seem to be more in the public interest, or less in the public interest, than we thought it then? We had no doubts then—I am speaking for the Government—surveying the situation as it existed in August, we had no doubts whatever as to what, on the whole balance of account when it was summed up, was the right course for the Government to take. Is there anyone here to-day who doubts that the course we then took was the right one? I do not see the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs in his place; I have no doubt that he has other pro-occupations; but, if he were here, I would ask him, does ho still impugn or challenge the practical wisdom of the step we took? Of course, it may be said that, if we had not taken it, it would all have been over by now. We should be standing amid the ruins of our prosperity, the revival of trade would have been set back indefinitely, and, more than that, we should never even have known that a revival was approaching—it would have been completely swamped and hidden under the deluge of a new misfortune. Pessimism, which does this country so much harm, would have escaped uncorrected; people would have had that feeling of despair that the depression was never going to change, but was imply going to move on from the worst moment into a disaster which would have rendered the worst moment permanent, if it had not even aggravated it greatly. In July, the only choice we could have offered the country was a choice between depression and disaster, but I believe that in May it may be possible for the country to see clearly set before it a choice, not between depression and disaster, but between prosperity and disaster. It may not be a choice, as it was in August, between two forms of cursing, but a choice, such as was offered of old, between blessing and cursing.
5.0 P.M.
It is said that the menace overhangs us. I have not disguised at all the detrimental consequences of that uncertainty and suspense. But for this menace overhanging the coal trade, and through it every industry in the country, I am assured by competent judges that we might be in the full current of a strongly setting tide of industrial revival. That is what is standing in the way more than
any other single factor at the present time. But it is better to have a menace overhanging you than to be actually engulfed in an avalanche which has fallen on your head. A man may be very anxious when he is carrying a tray of crockery forward, and his anxiety is removed when he has let it crash to the ground, but the situation is hardly improved. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, and some of his friends on those benches, tried their best to provoke the supporters of the Government into a fierce quarrel upon the issue which was then raised. I remember the right hon. Gentleman's taunt about the Government being unable to face cold steel. I myself have been in responsible office during all the four great strikes which have taken place in the last 15 years, two on the railways and two in the mines. Although these experiences are very distressing to anyone who cares about the prosperity of the country and the growth and distribution of wealth among its people, certainly there is nothing in them which is at all comparable to the stresses and anxieties with which those who have held office in those rough times through which we have passed have ever had to face. Certainly we do not feel that this taunt which the right hon. Gentleman flung across the House was one which was compatible with the high responsibilities of a statesman who has led the country through such days of difficulty and peril. I cannot attempt to prophesy what the final result of this coal question will be, or how we shall get round, or get through, the situation which will confront us at the end of April. But even if we assume the worst, I believe that the efforts we have made to avert that worst will have been fully justified. The nation will understand the issue and will respect the Government for the efforts which it has made for peace and for pursuing its convictions of what, in its judgment, was best in the interests of the whole community, without regard to the taunts and jibes which were flung at them.

Mr. HARTSHORN: I agree with two points made by the right hon. Gentleman, the first of which is that, while this is a matter of interest in all parts of the
House, no one can be more keenly interested in it than we who sit on these benches. And I hope before sitting down to show what real grounds we have for being interested and for being very concerned about the situation that has developed in the coal trade. The other point with which I agree with the right hon. Gentleman is when he says that in July last the Government had no option but to adopt the payment of a subsidy to the coal trade because of the conditions into which that industry had developed prior to that date. As a matter of fact, in July last there was no settlement in the coal trade. It mattered not how much goodwill had been imported into it either by the owners or the workmen or both. It was not possible at that time to have a settlement. I think it is only right to say that the discontinuance of the subsidy at the present time is altogether unthinkable.
Having agreed to that extent with the right hon. Gentleman I am afraid that I agree with few other of his conclusions or deductions from the situation as it exists to-day. I hope, however, nothing that I am going to say will add to the difficulties of the situation, and I also hope that I may make some suggestions which may tend to improve that position But before getting on to that, I should like to say, first of all, I have a few complaints to make about the form in which this subsidy has been applied. We on this side, and the nation as a whole, have real cause for complaint that the Government in July last adopted the coalowners' proposals without imposing reasonable conditions and without attaching any sort of safeguards. I want the Committee to look for a moment at these proposals. What were they? The miners at that time, and for 15 months previously, had been working under an agreement which ensured to them a wage 33⅓ per cent. above pre-War wages. For some years prior to that, they had been working under an agreement which gave them 20 per cent. above pre-War wages. It is not an exaggeration to say that the miners of this country, except possibly in the Eastern area, have gone through four years of semi-starvation, and that few, if any, bodies of men in this country have endured and suffered the hardships which the miners have. Last July they were receiving wages which left no sort
of a margin for reduction. They had these unfavourable conditions, as I have said, for four years, and yet they were prepared to go on with them. It was not they who tendered the notices. It was not they who created the situation of last July. The notices wore tendered by the coalowners. What was the demand put forward? It was that in future they should be relieved of any definite liability to pay any minimum wage at all, that they should be relieved of the liability of paying any percentage at all on any base wage that existed, and that they should be relieved of any liability to pay even a base wage which had been established for 10, 20, 30, or 40 years. It was, in effect, a demand that the workmen should agree to work without any guaranteed wage of any dimensions whatsoever.
That was the demand put forward by the coalowners. I say, with great deliberation—and I select my words when I say it—that there has never been such a brazen proposal submitted to any body of workmen or such a preposterous demand made by any body of employers in the whole history of the industry of this country. That is the demand which they made, and which the workmen resisted, and that is the demand which the Government have conceded, and I say we have cause for complaint about the Government having placed the employers in the pampered position which they occupy to-day. In effect, they said to the coalowners: " Just go on and do as you like. Conduct your business as you care. You need not assume that you have any liabilities whatever for anything like a decent standard of living for the men or, indeed, for any wage at all. Go and sell your coal at any price you like. When your business is done, ascertain what the average proceeds amount to, from those proceeds deduct costs other than wages, and then, if there is any surplus left, give 87 per cent. to the workmen and keep the rest yourselves." It matters not what that 87 per cent. may amount to, or what it may represent in wages. That 87 per cent. of the surplus is all the employers retain, and there is the position to-day under that provision. The 33⅓ per cent. has gone. We have no longer got the 20 per cent. minimum wage under the 1921 agreement. We have no longer got the 1914 wage base. We have not got even that base
wage paid. In South Wales to-day the coalowners are paying wages which they paid 18 years ago, and they have never paid such low wages from that date to this.

The SECRETARY for MINES (Colonel Lane-Fox): But does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that that is all the men are receiving?

Mr. HARTSHORN: No, I do not suggest anything of the sort. I suggest that you have placed the coalowners in the position of paying only that wage, and in a few minutes, if I may be allowed to proceed, I shall be able to show what you have done for the industry and the extent to which you are responsible for the position which has been developed. I think it is about time that a few home truths were said about the Mines Department. A Department which is dependent for all its tabulated information upon the Coalowners' Association cannot very well take that impartial attitude in relation to mining matters which it should do. I have said that the wage payable under this arrangement in the Welsh coalfields to-day and which the coalowners are liable for is only 87 per cent. of the wage which they received in pre-War days. The Secretary for Mines asks if that is all they are getting. No, of course it is not. I will give an illustration of the position.
In 1914, what we call our low grade wage men in South Wales received 5s. 4d. a day. That was their pre-War wage. To-day they get 8s. 0¾d. That is the subsistence wage. They were getting it in July, and the employers in July were responsible and liable for the payment of that. To-day what is the position? To-day the employers pay to these men 4s. 7½d. per day, and if the workmen had agreed to the proposals put forward by the coalowners last July, that is every penny they would get, and the same thing is operating in all the coalfields of this country. If you go to Scotland they are getting to-day only 94 per cent. of the pre-War wage, in Northumberland they are getting only 83 per cent. and in Durham they are getting 88 per cent. The Eastern area is the only one area in the coalfields of Britain which is really getting as much wages as they got in pre-War days. Having said that, I think I am entitled to repeat my statement that the coalowners ought
never to have been placed in this position. They ought never to have had their demands conceded them as was done By the Government in connection with this subsidy. That is the first complaint I have to make.
The next suggestion or complaint or whatever you like to call it, I have to make is that, in applying this subsidy there was a total disregard of the nature of the coal problem. No sort of regard was had for the problem with which we were faced when this subsidy was decided upon and its method of application was determined. The whole position has been treated as though it were a unified industry, as though all the mines were under common ownership and there was some principle of uniformity in the conditions which existed within the industry. The fact that the coalfields of Britain are composed of 3,000 privately-owned mines, all with varying capacities, seems to have been entirely ignored in the arrangements entered into. I am not very surprised at that, because we know that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman who is in charge of the Mines Department takes very little notice of and has not studied the problem from the standpoint of private enterprise at all. When we ask for any information which will give us some idea of how things are going on that basis, his reply is that either it is not available, or that he will get it from the Mining Association for us, and as far as he is concerned he is simply not studying this problem at all from the standpoint of the whole of these mines being privately owned and with many varying conditions existing within the industry.
I think I can illustrate the point I am trying to make with a few figures. When the Sankey Commission sat, Sir Lowes Dickinson placed "before it the results of the general conditions that existed in collieries owned by 675 different firms, of which 136 were in South Wales, and I think those 136 firms represented about 75 per cent. of the output of the coalfield. He analysed, for the purposes of that Commission, the financial position of each of those concerns. First of all, he said, taking the 136 firms as a whole, the position was this. The average proceeds were 21s. 9d. a ton, the costs were 20s. 1d. per ton, and there was a profit of 10d.
If those 136 mines had been collectively owned—I am not talking about nationalisation—that would have been the position of the whole of that business represented by those 136 firms. But Sir Lowes Dickinson realised that they were not so owned, and he felt it necessary to put before the Commission the real situation as it existed under the present system of working them, and he therefore grouped them, and he found that of those 136 firms 63, producing 63 per cent. of the output, made profits not of 10d. a ton, but of 2s. 8d. a ton. They had not got a cost of 20s. l1d. Their average cost was 19s. 8d. The other 73 firms, producing 37 per cent. of the output, did not make 10d. a ton profit, but 2s. l1d. a ton loss. The moment you realise that fact you have the South Wales coalfield grouped into two sets of conditions. You have two groups there separated in all their economic aspects one from the other by as great a margin as divides any two coalfields in Britain. If that is pursued you will find that in every coalfield in Britain you have exactly the same kind of conditions, and as between one coalfield and another you will have these disparities existing. What has been done is that there has been a total disregard of all that varying competing capacity in the different coalfields and in the different collieries in each coalfield.
Sir Lowes Dickinson went a step further and showed the costs in each of these cases. Of those firms, 45 had costs varying from 15s. to 20s. a ton, 36 had costs varying from 20s. to 22s. a ton, and 12 had costs varying from 22s. to 25s. a ton, so that you had big blocks of coal in one coalfield, separated in the matter of costs by 4s. or 5s. a ton. which had to compete in the same market, and the result is what we find it in the coal trade to-day. Here you have all these people going, with their varying competing capacity, into a great scramble for such trade as is going, and they are undercutting each other, and the result was that last July prices had gone down to such an extent that it was only the low cost output that could live. The higher cost output had been brought down to a point where they were actually losing money. All these facts have to be borne in mind in connection with it. Some people say that has always been the case. We have always had physical difficulties—internal
differences in the collieries, and new and old collieries, and all these things make for varying costs. But we have in the mining industry to-day something we never had before, something we did not have in pre-War days, and something that has not been taken into account at all in "the fixing of this subsidy, and that is the fact that a portion of the industry has been efficiently equipped and has had imported into it machinery and modern methods such as never existed before. As a matter of fact, we had in this industry in pre-War days about 400 coal conveyors. To-day we have 1,400. In pre-War days we had 3,000 coal cutters. We have now seven or eight thousand, cutting about 50,000,000 tons of coal. Since pre-War days electric motors have increased to the extent of over 800,000 horse-power. If that had taken place over the whole industry it would have been a great, good thing, but it has been concentrated on about 40 per cent. of the industry and, as a consequence of that, you have 40 per cent. of the coalowners who have a competing capacity and who determine the market and dominate the prices, and leave the other people stranded high and dry.
That is the real problem with which the coal trade is faced. It is represented by figures of that kind. What is happening? We are giving the subsidy to all alike. I have known in the Welsh coalfields two colliery companies producing each a million tons a year, and the cost in the one case is 5s. more than the other. Those two concerns go on to the market, and that with the lower costs gets the contract. The subsidy is given, and it enables the one with the high cost to cut his prices, but the other has gone down and the relative position of the two is left unchanged. It has solved nothing at all but has simply driven down prices, and what is the effect of that? It is seen month by month in the subsidy that has to be paid. In August the average subsidy for South Wales was 2s. 6d. a ton. In September it was 3s. 8d., in October 4s., and this month it is 4s. 10d. a ton. What ought to have been done in connection with this business was for the Secretary for Mines to study the situation which actually exists in this great industry. If prior to last July he had ascertained what the real situation was
and had developed a scheme ready for July and come along and said, "If the miners and mine owners will produce a scheme for solving the coal problem, the Government will put £25,000,000 into the scale to help you," I undertake to say there would have been such an effort on the part of the miners and mine owners as would almost certainly have resulted in a scheme being devised which would have brought about a solution of this problem, instead of which all that is being put through the sieve and the industry is left unchanged. No subsidy ought ever to have been agreed to which did not associate with it some scheme for the re-equipping and modernising and making efficient and reorganising of this great industry. There is ample material upon which to work to devise a scheme of that sort, and had that been done there would have been a great step in advance. I am not criticising the Prime Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer because that scheme was not devised, because they have plenty of other things to do, but certainly the Mines Department ought to have had a scheme of that kind in existence. Had they been following up the actual position in the industry they would certainly have imposed a number of conditions under which this subsidy would have been paid.
Let me give another case. In the South Wales coalfield we have what is known as the Powell Duffryn Company. They own several collieries. The least that could have been done would be to say, "If you are going to draw public funds you are not to close any of your collieries during this period as long as the whole of your concern is a paying proposition." There is the ocean. They have many collieries. They closed down one colliery in my district and another at Aberavon, and yet they have a good profitable concern. There is an anthracite colliery where it is admitted they have made £238,000 profits in the last balance sheet, and yet they have closed down a colliery. They are getting public funds although they are making hundreds of thousands of pounds profit. The profit is four or five shillings a ton, but the Government have not taken the precaution of saying, "You are not to close down any collieries while this is running." If that is the kind of thing we are to expect from the
treatment of this subject I do not think very much good can result from its operation, but very much good might have resulted and a solution might have been reached. There is ample opportunity for the Secretary for Mines between now and next May to endeavour to prevent a thing developing which has gone right up to now. We had in July in South Wales—and the same thing applies to all the other coalfields—a gap of 1s. a ton. We could not fill that gap last July. It has been widened, and we have now a gap of 5s. The industry cannot live on the prices that are being charged. Competition is bringing prices dawn to a point where it is impossible for the industry to live, and what ought to be done is to stop that process now, otherwise you are going to have a situation next May which nothing in the world can fill, and possibly there will be serious trouble. In these circumstances I hope the Minister of Mines will look very carefully into this and see if it is not possible to bring some kind of influence to bear upon the coal-owners to prevent this downward tendency and the expanding of this gap with which we are faced between now and next May.

Sir ALFRED MOND: With much of the right hon. Gentleman's speech I think everyone interested and having any knowledge of the coal industry will agree. The average figures which are so often quoted are extremely misleading. Average figures usually are misleading. The right hon. Gentleman based himself on the average figures of the industry, by which he proved that if the subsidy had not been granted, a loss would have been made by the industry which would have ruined it. As a matter of fact, that is not a true presentment of what has taken place in the industry, or what would have taken place. As has been pointed out already, in every coalfield a certain number of collieries are making money and a certain number are doing badly. The number of collieries which are doing well may be not so large as one would wish, but they are quite considerable in number, and, if no subsidy had been given, and wages had remained where they were, they would still be operating. Some would be making a profit.
The right hon. Gentleman endeavoured, not unnaturally, to make the best of a very poor case. I Jo not think he altogether succeeded. One serious criticism which can and must be brought against the action of the Government in July is that in a matter which was public knowledge for months in the whole of the industrial world, they took no steps and no action, except a negative one, until the eleventh hour. The right hon. Gentleman, when he reintroduced the gold standard, did so for the prime reason of the decline of British coal exports. There can be no controversy on that subject. He foreshadowed, in his speech in the reasons which he gave, that the re-introduction of the gold standard must naturally and automatically produce a decline of wages. Nobody quarrels with these economic maxims. What I am amazed about is that, with his usual foresight, he did not realise that the economic action he was taking then must produce disaster in the coal trade and consequently create a large amount of unemployment in the industry, and must lead to a serious industrial crisis, in which the Government were bound to take a part.
As a matter of fact, the subsidy is a re-inflation of that of which the reintroduced gold standard is a deflation. That is what the right hon. Gentleman is doing. From that point of view, I do not quarrel with him. I objected to the first step, but I say that it would have been more logical either not to have taken the first step, or, having taken it, to continue through with it. It is most illogical to deflate in an industrial crisis, and then in a moment of panic, without consideration, without any safeguard, and without any real knowledge of what you are doing, suddenly to throw £;20,000,000 or £;25,000,000 into the pot. The right hon. Gentleman has not explained why this sudden change of heart took place. Every argument which he produced as to the misery, the deprivation, the degradation, the danger of a great industrial upheaval was just as obvious on that afternoon as it is now, and it had been obvious for months. It had been staring us in the face.
The impression which the right hon. Gentleman and the Government gave was very bad. The impression they gave was not that they had surrendered to logical
reason and clear argument, but that they had surrendered to what he himself called extortion and ransom. I think on reflection he will be sorry that he used those words. It is a terrible thing to imagine that in a Government backed by an enormous majority, Ministers should stand up and practically admit that the step they took was to give way to extortion and ransom. I do not think that was a fair way of putting the case. The industry, as the right hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Hartshorn) said, was in a bad way. The. difficulties of adjustment were very considerable. Demands were made on both sides, not all of which were reasonable, and not all of which were expected to be granted, but, as is usual in disputes in the coal trade, these demands were supposed to be a start of something which after long, protracted negotiations and bargaining, would finally be adjusted. The fact that the negotiations broke down is not entirely conclusive that no agreement could be reached on a reasonable plan. We have seen that happen often before.
What has the subsidy achieved? Another Royal Commission. We have had endless Royal Commissions in the coal industry. What is there about the coal industry which everybody does not know? What is there further to be ascertained? No industry has been more discussed. There is no industry about which there has been more complete statistics, negotiations, and discussions between the mine owners and the representatives of the workmen and in which every investigation has not been made and every possible phase of information has not been ascertained. The Government have an expensive Department, recently created, whose function it is to know all about the coal industry, and yet when we get into a difficulty, what happens is that some eminent gentlemen, who know nothing about the industry, are set up to tell everybody what to do. I hope they will arrive at some conclusion.
All that could have been done long before July. The fact that the agreement was coming to an end was well known. What the Government have produced is exactly what the right hon. Gentleman himself admitted was most undesirable, namely, they have created suspense and uncertainty—suspense and uncertainty
which depends upon the Report of the Coal Commission, and the decision of the Government as to the continuance of the subsidy. The right hon. Gentleman remarked that in every export trade long contracts are required. But nobody in the coal trade knows what is going to happen in the industry next May. The development of collieries is being interrupted. Nobody will sink any new pits or undertake any new enterprises, or obtain any fresh finance. That is the result all over the country. For six or eight months the development of this great industry is held up because the Government sorely missed taking the obvious step of considering this matter at the proper time.
The result of the subsidy must have been disappointing to the authors, if not to the recipients. It has not been instrumental, practically, in restarting any-closed mines; it has affected very little the question of unemployment, and it has improved very little the condition of our export coal trade. There was a theory in coal export circles that a reduction of, say, 2s. 6d. a ton on export coal would result in our recapturing markets that had gone to Germany and other countries. Reductions were made, but the markets were not recaptured. It was overlooked that our competitors could also make reductions. The German Government is contemplating giving a subsidy. Germany no more than Great Britain can afford to have its coal industry put out of action. The fact is that in Europe there is a vast overproduction of coal. We produce more coal than the export markets can take. Recently, 8,000,000 tons of coal were lying on the banks of the Ruhr, pledged to a bank at a, high rate of interest, deteriorating at a considerable rate, and it had to be sold at any knock-out price. When you have conditions like that it is impossible for the coal trade to return to prosperity.
This is an industrial problem which must be tackled, and it is necessary for those who are responsible for the marketing of the product to endeavour to make arrangements to enable all the countries to sell a reasonable proportion of their production at a proper price, and at a price which will enable them to pay the man who is the backbone of the industry a reasonable wage. That is the key to the difficulty we are in. It is a commer-
cial question rather than a technical one. I believe from what I have heard from well-informed quarters that a proposition of that kind would not by any means be impossible to carry out. The subsidy has left the Government and the right hon. Gentleman in this position, that there is increased coal competition in this country and in the world. Those who are doing well have been able to give away the subsidy to their customers, and thereby to keep the less favoured ones in the position they were in before. That is one reason why, although some sections of the industry may have benefited by the lowering of the coal prices, the coal industry, as a whole, is not finding itself in that prosperous position which some people would expect.
Does it not strike hon. Members as a curious thing and almost a paradox that an industry which produces a prime necessity, a fundamental industry of the country, should be carried on on unprofitable lines, and that the owners in that industry should find it difficult to go on paying those engaged in what is one of the most hazardous and unpleasant industrial tasks in this country, a good wage? Surely that in itself shows that something is wrong. Coal is not a luxury. It is not a thing that people can do without. It is not an article that depends upon fashion. It is a prime necessity. There is more need for a selling organisation here than in any other industry, and for steps to be taken to stabilise prices, so as to enable all the partners in the industry to live in peaceable and more prosperous and reasonable conditions. The right hon. Gentleman is not happy about the position. He said that whereas in July we had depression and disaster, he hoped in May he would be able to show prosperity and disaster.

Mr. CHURCHILL: "Or."

Sir A. MOND: I hope we shall not have further depression and disaster. If it is a case of prosperity or disaster, what is going to happen when the contrast is shown? Surely the pressure to continue the subsidy will be irrestible, if you come to a period when what you offer the people is the difference between prosperity and disaster. Is the Government then going to plump for disaster or to continue prosperity by continuing the subsidy? That
is a question to which an answer is wanted. The right hon. Gentleman, not unnaturally, and quite carefully, attempted with some skill to give no reply to that. He adopted the silence of the Sphinx, an attitude which is not very usual with him. He made an appeal which was reasonable and one which I wish to re-echo, and that is, whether the industry cannot get together and, before the crucial date, formulate a scheme to put before the Government. I am convinced that nobody except those engaged in the industry are really able to formulate a scheme for the benefit of the industry. Everybody must recognise the parlous position of the industry. It is no use delaying coming to such an arrangement on the ground that some Members of this House and some people in the country believe that an entirely different economic system would be more beneficial to the industry and to the workers. That system does not commend itself to the majority of this House, and I do not believe that it commends itself to the majority in the country. It therefore could not be introduced, if ever, for many years.
In the meantime, the industry must be carried on, and the miner and all engaged about the mines must be provided with reasonable wages, and unemployment in the industry must be diminished. There are responsible leaders among the miners, just as there are responsible people about the coalowners, who must try to arrive at a scheme which might enable the Government—I do not say it will—to assist the industry, not necessarily by means of what I consider a crude, unsatisfactory and somewhat unfair subsidy, but in other ways to help the industry along and to facilitate a settlement. It is a terrible thing to imagine that one of our vital industries in this country should continually, as it has been in my experience for years, be threatened with these terrible crises and strikes which lead to losses for everybody and finally to benefits for nobody.

Mr. R. RICHARDSON: More lockouts than strikes.

Sir A. MOND: Whatever they are, they are interruptions of industry, and they cause loss to those who have placed their money in the industry and loss to those who work in it.

Mr. RICHARDSON: They drive the worker down every time.

Sir A. MOND: It seems to me that the speech made by the right hon. Member for Ogmore, who is himself a leader in that industry, and knows it intimately, is a. very hopeful sign. It is no use discussing to-day whether the Government did right or wrong in July last. The party to which I belong still dislikes the manner in which this step was taken by the Government and the method by which their policy was carried out. But the step was taken, and it is now impossible for any Government to reverse the position. That being so, I and those associated with me are not going to press to a Division the Amendment on the Paper. This is not, to my mind, a question in which party controversy is necessary. I am not going to discuss the somewhat controversial points that the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced in his contest with the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). All I say is that the settlement of 1921 was a settlement which produced peace for a number of years. The subsidy now under discussion is no settlement, although it provides quiescence for a time.

Mr. HOPKINSON: When the right hon. Member for Carmarthen (Sir A. Mond) discusses the question of rings in industry, I think the whole House and the country outside pay attention, because they have no doubt that they are listening to an expert. On the contrary, when he advocates inflation in this House the interest rather lapses. I myself and, I believe, the general public, will pay much more attention to his advocacy of the policy of inflation when he adopts it in his own business. When we see the great firm of Brunner Mond and Company writing up its stock on a falling market and in other ways carrying out the policy that the right hon. Gentleman recommends as a national policy, we will regard his advocacy of inflation as being as genuine as his advocacy of rings and trusts. So far as the inflationary part of his speech was concerned, and so far as the disasters which he says have overtaken the coal trade owing to the restoration of the gold standard are concerned, I ask the Committee to calculate for themselves exactly what has been the percentage effect on prices of the restoration of the gold
standard, and upon the wages of the miners. The figures are available from the records, and I think it will be found that the effect upon the wages is a matter of farthings and halfpennies only.

Sir A. MOND: I do not want to interrupt the hon. Member, but does he deny the fact that the restoration of the gold standard has made a difference of 2s. a ton in the export price?

Mr. HOPKINSON: I deny that absolutely. The subsidy has had more effect on the export price than the restoration of the gold standard. With the right hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Hartshorn), who spoke from the Front Opposition Bench, I join issue on many details. He drew attention to the enormous variation in the cost of production, even within the same district and the same colliery. But surely he forgot to say that one of the main reasons for the difference in the cost of production, quite apart from geological reasons, is the insistence of himself and his friends in the Miners' Federation upon an absolutely non-variable wage instead of allowing wages to suit themselves to the conditions in various pits. I will give an example. In my own district of Lancashire the geological conditions on the whole are unfavourable as compared with those in Yorkshire, and particularly with those in the Doncaster district. We have much more difficult seams to work, some of the pits are old pits, there is broken ground, and, generally speaking, our markets are not so constant as the markets for the Doncaster district. Against that we have the fact that the collieries of Lancashire are very largely in textile districts, and members of the miners' families are able to find work in other industries.
For example, a miner's boys normally go into the pits, but the girls find occupation at very fair wages indeed in the textile industry of the same district. In the Doncaster district there is not that possibility. The boys of a family no doubt will go into the pits, but, unless the girls of the family take up domestic service at a distance, the wage of the Doncaster miner must be at a higher rate than that of the Lancashire miner in any circumstances. This fact was brought to my notice when serving during the War. Towards the end of the War there were sent to us large numbers of colliery lads
from the Somersetshire coalfields, with which I was not acquainted. I was very interested to find that all these lads who came from the pits in Somerset were also skilled agriculturists. As a result it is possible to work the very difficult seams in the Somerset area, where there is an indifferent quality of coal, and to work them where, if there had not been the alternative trade of agriculture to be followed, it would have been impossible for them to provide a living wage throughout the year. Any attempt to get national settlements of wages and even settlements over a whole district is bound to be defeated in the long run because of these facts. The conditions are not the same in different districts. You sometimes find geological difficulties in a mining area counterbalanced by certain economic conditions which enable a lower wage to be paid and enable the coal to be mined.
There is another factor and a very important factor. It is the personal factor and relates to the competence of those who are managing the pits. The right hon. Member for Ogmore referred to one of the great colliery companies of South Wales. It is notorious that in the case of that particular company they have at the head of affairs men of really outstanding ability. As the right hon. Gentleman told us, pits which show a loss are bought up at very low prices without great capital expenditure and are converted into paying concerns. He must admit, therefore, that the personal equation is very important indeed. To combine artificially large groups of pits does not enable those who are concerned with the matter to find out who are the competent people and who are the incompetent people. No Government Department could possibly judge, because there is no criterion as to whether a man is capable of conducting an industry or not, except that of allowing him to go on until he reaches the bankruptcy court, unless he conducts the business properly. The Right hon. Gentleman, I think, drew wrong conclusions from sound premises.
Let me turn now to the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I shall be supported by people outside if I say that his optimism to-day did immense credit
to his nature, if not to his capabilities as a prophet. A large number of merchants contracts are expiring at the end of the year, and, as far as I have been able to ascertain, those contracts are being renewed at lower prices than the expiring contracts, which means a further burden upon this subvention. Again, I understand that the railway companies, who are very important customers, find that they are in position now to bargain with a strength that they had not before, and that therefore, they anticipate getting their coal in the ensuing year at a very considerable reduction on present prices. Further, when we come to the question of exports it seems to me that theoretically there is absolutely no limit to the amount of the subvention that may be necessary. It is all very well to argue that the method of ascertainment by districts and not by individual concerns does put in a safeguard and a limit to the amount of the subsidy.
But contemplate a district almost entirely concerned with the export trade, a comparatively small district with a comparatively small number of large mining companies, a district in which presumably everybody knows everybody else and knows what everybody else is quoting for coal f.o.b. Suppose that it is a district where there is very little difference geologically or in the market. There is a natural tendency to quote lower and lower f.o.b., in order to meet the lower and lower prices of foreign competitors. The coalowners concerned are able to increase their output, knowing that they cannot lose on it, and that they may make a profit of a few pence a ton. It is obviously their duty to their shareholders. If they see that they can make a small profit and continue to make that profit large in the aggregate by increasing their output, then they act up to their duty to those who have invested their money in the concern, and they increase their output, and the subvention becomes larger and larger. I also join issue with the right hon. Member for Ogmore, who hinted that this plan of the subvention was a plan put forward by the Mining Association of Great Britain during the negotiations. I do not think that that statement is quite correct.

Mr. HARTSHORN: I did not say that.

Mr. HOPKINSON: Then I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. I thought that he implied that. It is common knowledge that the plan was greatly disliked by the mineowners, and that they did their level best to prevent its adoption. As it was put to them that on patriotic grounds they should not refuse the solution, as by force majeure they were compelled to accept such settlement, one can hardly condemn them for benefiting by it. Since they said in effect, "If you insist on doing this thing, we will carry out the arrangement," no responsibility can now rest on them. For all these reasons I do not think that the estimate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is likely to be realised. I think he will find, when the ascertainments are made for the earlier months of next year, that the estimate is very much exceeded. It is impossible to condemn root and branch the settlement that was made. I still think that a mistake was made in tactics, but I am forced to admit that the grounds upon which the Government came to their decision were grounds to which the utmost weight must be given.
6.0 P.M.
It so happens that members of the Government have been kind enough to tell mo a good many of the reasons, and they certainly were very cogent. At the time I think many of us here were inclined to think that this was the end of all things in industry, that the Government had made a complete and utter surrender. Yet now we should not adopt quite such an antagonistic attitude. We do not suggest that it was a surrender to violence, but I and those who think with me, claim to reserve our judgment, and we also claim, in spite of what has been said, that the bolder course would have been found the safer.

Mr. POTTS: I understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer to state that of this subvention over 90 per cent. has gone in wages. I wish to take up that point and to say at once that 90 per cent. has not gone in wages, and, as a matter of fact, the subvention itself was not in reality given for the purpose of augmenting wages, but was the result of a bargain made by the Government with the coal-owners and not with the miners. I thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have told us more than he did. The right hon. Gentleman must know, if
he is not badly advised, what is the present position of the industry. The mining situation is such that, if the industry proceeds on the lines on which it has been proceeding since last July, it will be in a worse position than it was in at the time when the subsidy was arranged between the Government and the coalowners. I desire to give some facts indicating how we are drifting and what the existing condition of things is likely to produce. I do not wish to go a long way back in giving figures; I propose to quote from, the figures of commercial disposals in the eastern area of the coal trade, dated 31st March of this year. This area, in round figures, represents about one-third of the total, and I isolate it because it is always deemed to be the most prosperous area in connection with the coal trade.
I desire to show the Committee exactly how we stand in that area and to demonstrate the situation in so far as the figures are available. On 31st March the commercial disposals in the Eastern area in tonnage came to upwards of 20,000,000 tons. The cash received for the tonnage was £;18,830,000. I wish to show the fall in price us from the beginning of the subsidy and to suggest to the Department in charge of the mining industry that they ought to have been on the alert and ought not to have allowed it to occur. The average price on 31st March for the coal sold at that time was 18s. 1.87d. At the end of June this year the tonnage of coal sold was just over 17,500,000 tons, the actual money was .£;14,721,000, and the actual average price realised was 16s. 8.94d.
Let us examine how the country as a whole stands. For the whole country, on 31st March, the commercial disposals exceeded 56,800,000 tons, the money realised was over £;52,698,000, and the actual average price was 18s. 6.3d. In June, in the whole country the commercial disposals fell to just over 50,000,000 tons, and the money realised was £;43,623,000, equal to a price of 17s. 5.03d. Let us now bring the figures for the Eastern area up to date. We find, taking September and October, to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer referred in his statement, that the tonnage in the Eastern area was 6,145,416 tons in the month of August, and the money realised was £;4,376,348. That is a fall in the selling price to 14s. 2.91d. When we take the month of
September, we find the figures are as follows: Actual tonnage output, 7,012,000 tons; money realised, £;4,953,106; average price, 14s. l.51d. In the month of October, the tonnage was 7,859,311 tons, the money realised was £;5,584,187, and the selling price was 14s. 2.52d. For the full three months, the output was 21,017,486 tons, and the proceeds amounted to £;14,913,641. The average over the whole of the three months is 14s. 2.29d.
What does that mean? That the actual selling price of coal from the period of the trouble when the arrangement of the subsidy was made, down to the last three months, has fallen by more than 4s. a ton or by more than the actual subsidy. Who has got the benefit? The miners have not got it. The coalowners in the end are not going to get it. The people who have got that subsidy are the people who are buying the coal. The reduction in the price will bring all that subsidy back to the public to whom we sell the coal. The figures and facts show that it is going straight to the buyer of coal and is not being left in the industry to augment profits or wages. These are facts to which the Secretary for Mines should pay attention. As regards the agreement, when I examine it I find that what the Government have agreed to is exactly in accordance with the arrangement made between the miners and the employers in 1921, which was a dictated policy, laid down by the owners after our defeat. In 1921, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), who was then Prime Minister, said; "The pits that cannot pay must go out of existence." That is what the right hon. Gentleman told us, and I was there at the time. But the first consideration in the mining industry —and this should be recognised by the House of Commons and the nation— should be the interests of those working in the industry and their families. Those interests should be considered before profit. If we want a proper race of people, we must arrange conditions under which they can live properly.
The industry is not managed well at the present time. Hon. Members on the other side of the Committee may not know what we know, but I ask them to take the remarks of the Chief Inspector, Sir Thomas Mottram, when he was in
Yorkshire, and also the remarks of his predecessor. What do they say? Sir Thomas Mottram's report, made when he was in charge of Yorkshire, said that only one-third of the mines in Yorkshire were equipped in an up-to-date manner for the production of cheap coal. If Yorkshire was in that position, what about the rest of the country? Yorkshire is, practically speaking, recognised as being in advance of other districts as regards the coal trade. If we are to deal with this matter next May on a proper economic basis, there will have to be a drastic change. The Government must look deeper than they have been looking up to now for the cause of the trouble. Let me give a word of warning to those who say that the only way to make the industry economic is to reduce wages and increase hours. I tell hon. Members opposite and the country that if the hours of the working miner are attacked, I, for one, and, I believe, all the Labour party, will resist the proposal. I myself have worked in a mine since I was 12 years of age and, even to-day, the life of the miner is not what it ought to be.
In 1921, I had the pleasure of putting the case on behalf of the mining industry for shorter hours at the inquiry, and we established a case by which we got a concession of an hour. I said then, and it was challenged by coalowners, that given proper attention, proper supervision and a proper means of tackling the situation, in a few years time this country would be able to produce, under shorter hours, the full quantity produced in 1913. I said it was only a matter of tackling the problem in the right spirit and in the right way, and if we were to have success we must have co-operation. It was then said, however, "Get wages right and everything else will come right." Has that been the case? Wages have gone down to below the minimum at which the people in the industry ought to be expected to live, but the industry has not righted itself in consequence. I appeal to hon. Members between now and next May to give due attention to these considerations. Otherwise, when May arrives we will find ourselves faced with one of the most gigantic and difficult problems which we have ever had to face in this country.

Lieut.-Colonel HEADLAM: There is one thing that one has noticed very
clearly in the course of this Debate, and that is that whoever has spoken, to whichever party he belonged, he has endeavoured, to the best of his ability, to keep politics out. I am quite certain that that is the only way in which we can take notice of the coal situation at the present time. It is not for us in this House—indeed, it is not for anyone in the country at the present time—to look upon this as a political question. It has been removed from politics, for the time being, by the Government having referred the subject to this Royal Commission. In that way, and in that way alone, I, personally, think that the policy of the Government in granting the subvention is completely justified. I think that anyone who has been in touch, more or less, with the mining industry during the last few months must have noticed that there has come this change in the situation, that the granting of the subvention has, at any rate, had an effect—I am not talking for the moment about an economic effect, but a psychological effect—upon all parties in the industry.
In the part of the world from which I have the honour to come, the county of Durham, I know that both the owners and the men are looking upon this matter far more as an economic question that can be adjusted between them than was the case formerly. Certainly, the change in the attitude of mind from August to November is very noticeable, and I shall be surprised if other hon. Members who come from the county of Durham do not say the same thing. That is a. great achievement, and something for which we can be grateful, because this is primarily an economic question. I was very glad to see that the right hon. Member for Carmarthen (Sir A. Mond), after attacking, more or less kindly, I thought, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, also decided that this was no longer a question of politics. You can quite easily pick holes in the manner in which the subvention, has been granted and the way in which it is administered. I, personally, think some of the criticisms delivered from the front Opposition Bench were rather uncalled for, but that is a matter of opinion, and I shall not venture to enlarge upon that subject at the present time. What I do think is that we must make up our minds that it is primarily a matter for the industry itself to settle. That was
the reason why the Government was so long in coming to its decision about granting this subvention. It left it to the last minute, because it thought, as we all on this side think, that this is primarily a question for the industry, and that it is not a matter in which the Government should step in unless it is absolutely necessary.
I think that when May comes we shall find that both parties will have got together. It is absurd to suppose that you can settle this great question, from the point of view of the owners, by simply saying that you cannot make this trade pay unless the men will take less money and work longer hours. That could only be a temporary settlement of the question; it could not be a permanent solution. The question that we have to settle to-day is how we are to regain our lost markets and, at the same time, keep up the proper standard of wages for the men who are working in the mines, and I think that all owners of collieries realise that perfectly well. But the problem is a gigantic one, because admittedly there are many mines in this country which cannot pay their way, and the real problem, I think, that we have to face, and that we shall have to face, is how we are going to find work for miners when they are no longer able to be employed in the mines.
That is the real problem that is at issue, because there is no doubt about it that we cannot anticipate in the future anything like the coal trade that we have had in the past. Putting aside altogether the way in which coal is threatened by other means of power, such as electricity and oil, which we have discussed ad nauseam in this House in other Debates on the coal question, we have to realise that the coal of other countries is being much more rapidly developed than it used to be before the War, and therefore I, for one, do not anticipate that the coal trade of this country will ever be in the same favourable position as it was in the past. The problem that we have to face is a problem far bigger industrially than anything that this country has had to face in the past, and that is why I appeal in this House, as I appeal wherever I speak on this subject, to all parties to forget for the moment that they are trying to press forward a
particular political view of their own, and to think only of this great economic question which affects so many thousands of our people, and to pull together in the right way and in the right spirit.

Mr. WARNE: I want to follow in the same spirit as that of the hon. and gallant Member for Barnard Castle (Lieut.-Colonel Headlam), who has just sat down, and I will not trouble the Committee more than a moment or two, because I do not want to deal with the details of the problem confronting the mining industry at the present time. That problem is well known, but the aspect of it that wants emphasising is that it is not entirely the old problem that has confronted us at certain periods. It is somewhat of a new problem, but the question to which I want to draw attention is more as to the spirit in which we in this country are going to approach the month of May. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, I believe, to-day really tried to deliver a pacific speech, but the right hon. Gentleman has thrown around himself such a martial atmosphere that, even when he is making a pacific speech, he utters sentences which give those who are listening to them an impression quite different from what the right hon. Gentleman wished to convey. He has made a statement to-day which, I am satisfied, when it is read in the Press to-morrow, will be construed differently from the way in which it was intended by the right hon. Gentleman. He was talking about the situation at the end of last July, and these are the words that he used: "We have postponed the crisis until we can deal with it more effectively." It is because of what preceded the right hon. Gentleman's remarks that I am satisfied an entirely different interpretation will be put upon his statement when it is read by the working men in this country to-morrow.
Sitting here on 7th August, when the Estimate was submitted for the subvention to the industry, I heard two speeches delivered from the Front Bench opposite, one by the Prime Minister himself and one by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ninety-five per cent. of the speeches were admirable under the circumstances, but there was still 5 per cent. which had that defiant note, the same as we have heard to-day, to the effect that the country has been "held up," and that sort of thing.
I want to say that, if that gets abroad, or if that is the spirit in which we are going to approach this problem when May comes, there will be no solution of the problem. I want us to realise exactly what has happened since last July. Fascism has got a following. They believe there is work for them to do in the future. "O.M.S." has become quite an institution in our land. The Government itself is not free, for it has issued certain instructions to the local authorities of this country. All this is creating an atmosphere of mistrust. I want to say that I disagree entirely with the remarks of certain trade union leaders in this country, which are creating an atmosphere of utter fatalism, to the effect that nothing can be done in May and that this country has got to he plunged into one of those internal catastrophes which I protest against, because it is the people of my class who are the worst sufferers in he long run.
Can we not from now onward—and I am speaking for my colleagues on these benches—can this House and the Government not from now onward create an atmosphere that is going to be helpful when May comes? Why, we have got, if we care to examine our international affairs, a wonderful example of what could be done in six months. Everybody remembers the marchers to Berlin at the end of the War, the people who wanted to do that, but the Locarno Pact is a long way from that. There was a spirit engendered, I have no doubt by the grim economic forces at work, but it has come. Surely, when we look at Ireland, we see the same thing. There are still people who think that the only way to settle affairs in Ireland is to sink them in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but the Irish Treaty is a long way from that. Surely then, seeing these things work, can we not create an atmosphere, and work so that when May comes some permanent solution, or at any rate, something in the way of a solution that is going to lead us to a greater solution, may be arrived at, so far as the mining industry of this country is concerned?
I believe that, with that goodwill that should be prevailing in this country, we can get through this crisis, which everybody says is impending and is going to land us into catastrophe. Given a spirit of hopelessness, your Commission's Re-
port will be a useless document, but given a spirit of goodwill on both sides, the Commission's Report, I am satisfied, will be a charter for the miners of this country which will make for the benefit of themselves, of the mining industry, and of the nation at large. Both sides, from now on till May, have got to abandon many of the obsessions and ideas and dogmas that are occupying their minds at the present time. Let the owners abandon, and the Government give no countenance to, the notion that the only solution for the mining industry is for the miners to sacrifice the already too low standards that they have at the present time, and Jet it come from the miners—and I will put it up here for them to-day—that they are willing. The great mass of the miners and their wives and children are looking to a happier existence for the contribution and the service they render to carry on this very important industry.
If we look at it from that point of view, I am satisfied that if this House and the Government will only bend to, and let the country and the miners and mineowners know, a solution of this thing must be found. The country cannot afford a struggle, and even if we get into a struggle, are the problems solved? Why, they are intensified a thousand times. Seeing the uselessness of conflict internationally, seeing the uselessness of conflict inside the British Commonwealth, I put in my plea that the same spirit of good will, based on that experience, should now be brought to aid in the settlement of the problems confronting the mining industry of this country.

Mr. ROY WILSON: I had not really intended to take any part in this Debate this afternoon, but I rise for a very few minutes to associate myself entirely with the most excellent speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down. I can only say it is my profound belief, that if the spirit he outlined in his most eloquent speech can permeate not only this House but also all those in the country who are so ardently desiring a, settlement of this dispute, a settlement will be arrived at, and one that will be entirely satisfactory to all parties concerned. I know something of the miner, representing, as I do, a mining industry, and I want to make my position perfectly clear in one respect. I shall be no party, so
far as I am concerned, to any proposals which mean a lower standard of life for the miner and his family, and I am perfectly certain I am voicing not only my own opinion but the opinion of all Members in this House, especially the younger Members of the Conservative party, when I say that we are entirely at one with hon. Members on the Opposition side in the view that the miner's standard of living must cot be reduced.
I would like to associate myself, if I may, with the very eloquent speech delivered by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Barnard Castle (Lieut.-Colonel Headlam). I am quite certain this is an economic question which can be dealt with on sound, business lines if all parties will get together. Undoubtedly, as he said—and I entirely agree—there are too many mines badly producing coal which, possibly, may have to be closed down, but, at any rate, some solution on business lines must be found for those particular mines which are more or less out-of-date, and my word to the Government—if I may offer a word to the Government on this point —is this. I do hope that they will not wait until May comes, or whatever date this Commission produces its report, but that the Minister of Mines and the Government will work with one end in view, and that is to do everything they can in the four months which lie before us to transmit both to the mine owners and the miners' representatives the views which have been expressed in this House this afternoon, and so ably expressed by the last speaker from the Opposition benches. If those four months are wisely used, whatever the Commission's report may be, men of good will will get together, and I, for one, am convinced that one result, and one result only, will accrue, and that is that we shall see a happy settlement of this dispute, and one which will in no way lower the standard of the miners, who deserve the sympathy of everyone in this country.

Mr. DUNCAN GRAHAM: I am not sure that we should not get a peaceful solution of the trouble in the mining industry if, as the last speaker said, men of good will would come together and try to find a means of settlement. We on this side profess to be men of good will, and we have on innumerable occasions met the coalowners with a very keen
desire to get a settlement, because the last man who is anxious to have anything to do with a dispute, large or small, is a trade union official. We are not going about dragging out coat-tails for someone to tread on, so that we can get up a fight. We are seeking to get a settlement, and while we agree that it is an economic question, we do not agree that it is absolutely and entirely free from politics. As a matter of fact, the right hon. Gentleman, in introducing the Debate to-day, made it perfectly plain that the intention of the Government is to await the report of the Commission. Part of the duty of that Commission is to submit recommendations that might require legislation again. I hope legislation is not going to be introduced by the Government to reduce the miner's wage, but there is a probability that some of you are hoping that this more or less Tory Commission will suggest legislation that will give the Government justification for increasing the working hours, because there are some people who imagine that the output would be very largely increased if the working hours were lengthened. Curiously enough, the same people say that any number of mines will have to be closed down, and fewer men will have to be employed in the industry.
I want to suggest, with the very best will in the world, that if the industry were organised on a reasonably sound, economic basis, there would be no need, and there never would have been any demand particularly from the miners, for any subsidy. We do not want any money from the State, and it is a mistake to imagine that we are wedded to any particular theory. As things are at the moment, I am a believer in nationalisation, but I am not a bigoted nationaliser. If there were a veal attempt along the lines of good will, if we were to be taken into confidence, and looked upon as people who knew something about the industry, and were treated as equals in an attempt to find a solution, then we do not care what name you give it, provided it means contentment so far as the workmen are concerned, and well-being so far as the community is concerned, because I want to make it perfectly plain that patriotism is not the monopoly of the men and women on the other side, and neither is citizenship. The miner is a citizen in this
country, and the miners' leaders look upon it as the duty of the miner to consider the interest of the country as being greater than the interest of himself or the class to which we belong. But we expect to get some sort of recognition of equality in that respect from gentlemen on the opposite side, and particularly the coalowners. I was very pleased to hear the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Barnard Castle (Lieut.-Colonel Head-lam). I would like to know whether he is only giving his own personal opinion, of that of the coalowners. If he is giving the opinion of the coalowners, then there is a possibility of some sort of arrangement, with Government assistance being secured, that will obviate the necessity of any drastic measure being taken either on the one side or the other.
I am not giving hope that the prospects are as pleasant as one would imagine from statements by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am just doubtful that when the period comes along for the subsidy to end, the conditions will not be sufficiently improved at least to warrant the Government withdrawing the subsidy, and I want to put to the Government the advisability of considering the continuance of the subsidy until men of good will on all sides meet together and try to find a solution of the difficulty. It would be wrong of me to lead the House to conclude that we would accept the imposition of worsened conditions. Nothing but starvation will compel the men to work under worse conditions than at the present time. It is said there are too many men on the mines. My complaint is that there are many men drawing very considerable salaries, and very considerable advantages from the mining industry, who are neither near the mines nor working underground. You have thousands of agents and thousands of directors. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead (Sir E Home) is not present, and taking some part in this discussion. I understand he is a director of a colliery company, in South Wales, and as a matter of fact the Colliery Year Book gives the information that he, along with nine other directors, form the directorate of the colliery, although there are only 14 working above and below ground. There are thousands of directors of coal mines, but I will not say they are, except for a very
few, necessary to the working of the coal industry. As a matter of fact, they are a hindrance rather than a help, and if the question is to be considered from an economic standpoint, I think we should be entitled to ask that those who are not essential to the industry, such as agents and directors, should be entirely eliminated from it.
So far as we are concerned, we recognise that the Government did the right thing in July, and I think they are entitled to the meed of praise we can give them from these benches for the action they took, and for saving us from something in the nature of a catastrophe, because it would have been a catastrophe if a stoppage of the kind that was likely to take place had taken place. To some it would have meant civil war. We do not want war of any kind, far less war inside our own country. The Government are perfectly justified in what they have done, and I want to say that wholehearted support on this side will be given to the Government in continuing its policy until we do get some sort of a settlement, which, I hope, will work for good. I anticipate that there will not be any opposition. Our business here is to help, so far as we on this side possibly can, to get hon. Members to support the Government in any action that the Government may take that will mean the shortening of the difficulties with which this particular industry is concerned. I was speaking in Scotland, in my constituency, and in some respects we are there in an evil position. We have no insurance whatever, so our wages this week are the same as last week.
There is a very considerable amount of waste going on for which we are in no way responsible. Figures are given of which we know nothing at all. We have to accept what statements and figures the managements may give, even though we know that the managements are being conducted in a wasteful fashion. No suggestions that we offer will have the slightest attention paid to them. As a matter of fact, so long as that sort of condition obtains in the mining industry, I am afraid there is little hope of it being really brought into a sound and prosperous condition. At the same time there is reason to believe that such a change may be brought about as will insure a prosperous condition if there is
real good will. We can only hope that the expressions of sympathy and good will which are being put forward in this House this afternoon will be translated into action between now and the time-when it is necessary. If they are, I can assure hon. Members that speakers on this side, representing not only the point of view of the official leaders, but the miners themselves, will be glad. We are anxious to get some sort of arrangement which will make it possible to alter the conditions that have been going on in the past.

Mr. KIDD: Hon. Members on both sides of the House must, I think, have been enormously gratified by the speeches that have been made this afternoon from the opposite benches. There is no doubt what has been said is true, and we welcome the appeal of the hon. Member for the Wansbeck Division (Mr. Warne), and others, to all parties to come together so as to devise ways and means to bring back the prosperity of the industry. I was particularly struck by a point put forward by the hon. Member for Lanarkshire (Mr. D. Graham), who, while, generally speaking, in favour of the principle of the nationalisation of mines, said he was not wedded to any particular theory. All he was concerned about was to see the mines conducted with the greatest degree of efficiency possible. I can assure the hon. Member that if that is his attitude of mind, it is shared by hon. Members on this side of the House, and I trust in this I am spiking, not only with the lips, but from the heart, The vast majority of Members of this House, after the experience we have had of the industrial troubles of late, are ready now to join with the hon. Gentleman and his friends in devising some way, as he has suggested, out of our difficulties which will preserve the force of individualism.
The rule of restaint is the one dictated by the delicacy of the situation by the fact that we are simply now engaged in implementing obligations already undertaken and by the further fact that the Commission is sitting. The rule has been respected by all parties but the right hon. Member for Carmarthen (Sir A. Mond), speaking somewhat earlier towards the conclusion of his speech, rather attacked the Government for the policy pursued. He said the Government in July had yielded to extortion.
What did the Government do? Is the miners' wage to-day an extortionate wage? If not, then all the Government did was to strain every effort to see that that wage should not be less. I do not agree with what the right hon. Gentleman said when (he argued that without the subsidy the industry would have pulled through—some pits making profits while others broke "evens" because that presupposes you could deal with pit by pit while, whatever the future may bring, you could not in July last deal with the industry on that basis. I am not surprised that my hon. Friend the Member for Mossley (Mr. Hopkinson) challenged the economics of the right hon. Gentleman, I am in favour of a bigger and bigger production of coal resulting from a very much larger introduction of machinery. This may prove a contributory factor to the solution of the problem. Let me say, in conclusion, that I have no greet fear as to the competition that is sometimes spoken about. I think it is common knowledge: that a great shipping company has fixed its contracts for 1926 on a basis of 15s. per ton f.o.b. At that price coal will challenge oil or anything else in the way of competitive fuel. The point for the moment is to discover ways and means to put the coal on the market at a price even lower than now, while at the same time seeing that the wages of the miner are not lower, but rather that an improvement takes place.

Mr. BATEY: Under no circumstances or conditions should we be arguing for a subsidy if it could be helped. We believe the industry is far better without than with the subsidy, but the coal industry at the present time is not on a normal basis. I am certain of this, that without the subsidy the coal industry at the present time could not work. What we have got to consider is this: whether, on the one hand, the coal industry should close down completely, or whether, on the other hand, the subsidy should be given. I have to-day listened very attentively to the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a matter of fact, I have sat here waiting for a. chance to reply just to one or two of the arguments used by the right hon. Gentleman. He began by using this argument: He said that it was not to the credit of this great industry to have to draw this dole. There
is one thing sure: whether or not it is to the credit of this industry to have to draw this dole, no blame can be laid at the door of the miners. They are not in the least to blame. If there is any blame attached at the present time to the mining industry for having to depend upon the subsidy, the blame lies with the Governments more than with the mining industry.
It was the Coalition Government that, first of all, gave the coal industry its first big blow and knocked it down. In spite of all that has been said to-night, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer is to a large extent responsible for the condition of the coal industry. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is largely responsible because of the introduction of the gold standard When that was mentioned by some hon. Member to-day one of the Members below the Gangway said that the gold standard did not matter to the coal industry, did not affect it to the extent of a farthing or a halfpenny. I want to par to the House something of what was said by Sir Josiah Stamp in his Report. He was a member of the Court of Inquiry in July. I want to read just one or two words of what he said in regard to the gold standard and as to that standard being partly the cause of the present condition of the coal industry. He said:
In my view, therefore, the recent improvement in the exchange, or the decline in the price level to which I have referred, whether or not compulsorily brought about by anticipation and then by realisation of the gold standard, is sufficient in itself to account for the special plight of the industry since March.
In another part of the Report he said:
For these reasons I do not think the state of affairs in the coal industry in the last few months must be regarded as a necessary result either of the normal trade movement or the present agreement: the currency policy has aggravated it.
According to Sir Josiah Stamp, there is no question but that the gold standard is largely responsible for the present position of the coal industry. But take another expert, Mr. J. M. Keynes. Dealing with this matter he says, speaking of the price of British coal delivered in Brazil before the adoption of the gold standard:
The British could quote about 1s. l0d. a ton under the price of American coal, but
with the altered value of British sterling American coal can be quoted at 2s. 8d. per ton less than the British. In nearly every part of the world the gold standard has brought about an increased cost to the foreigner of no less than 1s. 9d. a ton.
7.0 P.M.
For that reason, he says, British collieries have had to reduce their price to a corresponding extent. I submit that, however much the Chancellor of the Exchequer might deplore the coal industry having to draw this dole, there is far more blame attached to the Government, and that it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer's introduction of the gold standard that gave this second blow to the coal industry. Far more blame rests there than rests either upon the mining industry or, especially, upon the miners. I was also interested when the Chancellor said that the coal trade had improved and that employment is better, and especially when he said employment was better in November than in October. I got from the Minister of Mines yesterday some figures regarding the men shifts worked in October and July. I asked for the figures so far as November was concerned only. I understood that the Ministry of Mines was not able to give the figures of men shifts worked in November.

Colonel LANE-FOX: The figures are coming to-day.

Mr. BATEY: So far as the figures supplied yesterday are concerned, they show that the men shifts worked in October above August were some 4,000,000. Then we have to take into consideration this fact, that in August there was the Bank Holiday, which would account for a large number of the lesser shifts worked in August than October, and, if you follow throughout the different districts, you find that the eastern district has an increase of 1,250,000 men shifts worked for August, which leaves the northern districts with only a small increase of the men shifts worked for August. That leads me to this, that whilst the Chancellor of the Exchequer may have been able to try to prove that trade is improving—

Whereupon THE GENTLEMAN USHER OF THE BLACK ROD being come with a Message, the Chairman left the Chair,

Mr. SPEAKER: resumed the Chair.

Orders of the Day — ROYAL ASSENT.

Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.

The House went, and, having returned,

Mr. SPEAKER reported the Royal Assent to:

1. Public Health (Scotland) Amendment Act, 1925.
2. Expiring Laws Act, 1925.
3. Ireland (Confirmation of Agreement) Act, 1925.
4. Leith Harbour and Docks Order Confirmation Act, 1925.
5. Campbeltown Harbour and Gas Order Confirmation Act, 1925.
6. Bexhill Corporation Act, 1925.

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY.

Again considered in Committee.

[Mr. JAMES HOPE in the Chair.]

Question again proposed,
That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £9,000,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1926, for a Subvention in Aid of Wages in the Coal Mining Industry.

Mr. BATEY: When interrupted, I was dealing with the argument of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that trade was improving, that it was better in November than in October, and I was trying to show by the number of man-shifts worked that in the North of England there are few indications of that improvement. In the County of Durham, there are no real signs of improvement. In July, we had 97 pits closed, to-day we have 91 closed. Certainly six pits have been opened since the subsidy was granted, but to-day we have rather more than 48,000 miners signing the unemployment register. With 91 pits closed—something like 20 per cent. of the pits in the Durham County—and with so huge a number of miners signing the unemployed register—being either totally unemployed or working short time —we are justified in saying that, after all, there does not seem to be very much improvement in the coal trade in Durham County. So bad are the conditions in Durham County that last week our men were forced to the extreme step of taking a ballot of the members individually as to whether they should stop the county or not. Everyone knows that a time like
this is not the time to bring a whole county out on strike, and nobody wants to do it, only the conditions are so bad, and the employers of those collieries which are working are forcing such bad conditions upon our men, that they were forced to take that step. A majority of our miners voted in favour of stopping the county of Durham. The number voting in favour of a strike was 44,285, and the number voting against a strike was 42,598. It is only the existence of a rule requiring that there shall be a two-thirds majority before a strike can take place that prevents Durham County from coming out on strike, though it is the very worst time that any county could think of striking. The conditions are so bad with us that the men have simply been goaded into that extreme action.
I want to draw attention to one impression which our people had about the agreement to pay the subsidy. Whether they were right or wrong, I shall not stop to argue, but it was the impression our people had when that agreement was arranged. Our people believed that so long as the subsidy was being paid there would be no local reductions in the county, that the same wages that had been paid would continue to be paid. They soon learned that the coal-owners meant something altogether different. While the coalowners did say they were prepared to pay the minimum percentage, which with us is 110 per cent., they said also, "We still have a free hand to reduce the basic rates,' with the result that even since the Government gave the subsidy the coalowners have forced reduction after reduction upon basic rates, and things with us simply could not be worse at the moment. Through sheer starvation hundreds of our men have been forced to start work under conditions such as they would never think of working under in normal times.
There is another point in regard to this subsidy I would like to put to the Minister of Mines. When it was agreed to we did not expect that it would be. paid on pits that were closed. What we really do want is this. We want every pressure that we can get brought to bear upon the coalowners to force them to open the pits. We never dreamed, in cases where pits were closed and workmen were employed for the purpose of keeping
those pits in such a condition that they could be re-opened later on, that the subsidy would be paid upon the wages of those workmen. In circumstances like that the coalowners ought to pay all the wages of all the men he employs. Every step ought to be taken to bring as much pressure as possible to bear upon the coalowners to open the pits, and they ought not to be given the least encouragement to keep pits closed.
We want to make this other small criticism. We believe that when the Government agreed to pay this subsidy they ought not to have pitched it at the coalowners and said, "There is the subsidy. Withdraw the notices you are intending to give—withdraw your notices, or withdraw the number of notices that you please. There is the subsidy; do with it what you like." The Government ought to have said to the coalowners: "We are prepared to pay the subsidy, but while we are paying the subsidy to any colliery company we want that company either to work all the pits or submit to an inquiry as to why the pits are not working." I think it ought to be within the power of the Minister of Mines even now to say to a coalowner who has a pit closed, "We want to hold an inquiry as to why that pit is closed"; and unless the coalowner can give satisfactory reasons, the Ministry of Mines ought to be able to bring pressure to hear upon that coalowner to secure the opening of the pit. I have in my mind the ease of a coal company with four pits in my Division. They are working three of those pits, and have one closed. They are working the three pits six days a week. It would be an easy matter for that company to work those four pits for five days a week, or for any other reasonable number of days, rather than to keep one pit closed, throwing hundreds of men out of work. I would like the Ministry of Mines to be more active in connection with those closed collieries, because we have hundreds of thousands of men who are suffering, who are starving, because collieries are closed. In the White Paper laid before the House of Commons on the last occasion were these words, to which I wish to draw the attention of the Minister of Mines;
The assistance given will, of course, enable more pits to work and more men to be employed than if the 1924 Agreement had
been continued without Government assistance.
I am prepared to admit that later on this is qualified by the statement that there is no obligation on the owners to open pits; but the implication in that sentence is that the subsidy would mean that more pits would be reopened and more employment found.
I was interested when the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked the question, by far the most important question this House can consider, "What is going to happen next May?" He pictured trade as booming, and that next May the coal industry would be able to stand on its own feet and do without the subsidy. My opinion is that next May the coal industry will not be able to do without the subsidy. I want to point out to the Minister of Mines that if the coal industry has to go on until next May under the conditions upon which it is going on to-day, trade will not be better next May, but worse, because this is what happens in the coal industry. Settled conditions are one of the first essentials to a revival in the coal industry. The industry is only in a good condition when it is able to make contracts over a long period. If the industry is not going to be able to make contracts longer ahead than May, there is every likelihood that when May comes trade will be worse than it is at the present time. My opinion is that when May comes the Government will be forced to continue this subsidy, that the trade will not be in a condition which will warrant the Government taking it off. While it is better for industries to do without subsidies, an the same time I believe, personally, that where an industry is not able to pay men a decent wage when they are working, it is the duty of the Government either to take over that industry or else pay for the failure of private enterprise, so that a man can get a decent wage.
Suppose that next May the Government say, "We are going to drop the subsidy; we will pay no more subsidy.' In Durham, we shall then be faced with this position. At the present time, we have got not hundreds but thousands of men working for the subsistence wage of 7s. 6½d. per shift, and not always getting work on five days a week, but sometimes only three or four days' work at 7s. 6½d. per day. Of that 7s. 6½d., 2s, 11¼d. is
paid by the Government as subsidy. If the Government drop the subsidy in May these men will have to work for something between 4s. 7d. and 4s. 8d. per day. I am certain no Member on the other side will say the coal industry should be left in a position where it can pay men only 4s. 7d. per day, even if they can get five or six days' work a, week. The men cannot live on that wage. It is impossible for them to live on it. I have no hesitation in saying the Government will find when next May comes that they will not be able to take off the subsidy, and they ought to go into this question without delay, and not leave things until the last minute. They ought to make up their minds as to what they are going to do, and, if they have to continue the subsidy, do so without waiting till the last moment —not wait till the 1st May, but do it as quickly as possible, to help the industry to get on its feet.

Colonel LANE-FOX: There have been a few points raised in the Debate to which I would like? to reply. But before doing so I wish to welcome the spirit in which this Motion has been received, and I only hope that the spirit and good will on this question which has prevailed during this Debate will prevail outside the House as well. I want to thank the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Warne) for the very valuable contribution which be made to this Debate. I can assure him that anything we can do in the Mines Department to secure peace on this question we shall certainly do. I want to repudiate the idea which has been suggested by several speakers, and by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carmarthen (Sir A. Mond), that the Government might have done much to prevent all this trouble if they had intervened earlier in the dispute. On that point I feel that I have no need to stand in a white sheet. I am quite certain that any Government faced with the situation with which we were faced last Spring would have followed exactly the course that we took.
We used every influence we could when we saw trouble coming to get the parties together, and conversations between the parties began early in the year. What would have been the attitude of hon. Members of this House if we had intervened before it was absolutely necessary. It is very easy to make suggestions after the event, but I hold very strongly that in
a dispute of that kind it is far better for the Government to keep out of it as long as there is a possibility of the two parties coming to an agreement, because you nearly always arrive at a more permanent settlement when an industry settles it amongst themselves, and I think it would have been a great mistake for the Government to have rushed in earlier as has been suggested by several hon. Members.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Hartshorn) blamed the Mines Department, and myself in particular, for the way in which the subsidy had been carried out, and he suggested that we ought to have had greater regard to the different conditions prevailing in different districts, and to the different positions as to profit making, etc. I was glad to hear from the right hon. Gentle-man that he is prepared to consider district arrangements, and the country will remember that on some future occasion when the question arises as between district arrangements and a national agreement.

Mr. HARTSHORN: I called attention to the fact that there were two sets of conditions even in one district for which even a district agreement would not meet those conditions.

Colonel LANE-FOX: I know the right hon. Gentleman went on to say that even different districts had different conditions of pits within them which should be treated differently. Has it not occurred to the right hon. Gentleman that, if that had been the method adopted, certain pits would have been penalised, because you would have been subsidising pits in' which the working was not so efficient in keeping down the cost of producing coal. Consequently, you would have been penalising the efficient mines by subsidising the less efficient, and that would have been most unfair. It would have been very unfair to the most efficiently managed collieries which had spent more on development and equipment and installed the best machinery to find that their competitors were going to be assisted, while they were not getting a subsidy at all,
In the case of the two specially large groups of collieries in South Wales, there may seem some reason to criticise, but in most districts of the country I am
certain that the only way in which this subsidy could have been administered without unfairness is the way which we have adopted. Several hon. Members have suggested that it is a drawback due to the subsidy that the price of coal has been reduced. It is true that the price has dropped, but prices are hardening now, and those who complain of the price having been reduced must remember that that has been a great advantage to the country, and at any rate it has caused a great improvement in regard to the iron and steel trades. Some questions have been put to me with regard to the present price of household coal, and there has been much resentment on the part of the public that the price of household coal should be raised by the collieries at this moment when there is a greater demand for it. Yet if the price hardens, then I think we shall get a little nearer the closing of the gap and the taxpayer will benefit.
The hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Potts) said that this was not a. subvention to wages, but it had gone into the owners' pockets. What are the actual facts? The total paid by way of this subvention up to the end of October was £6,063,000, but the sum to the credit of the collieries was £560,000 only, and, therefore, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer this afternoon told us, 90 per cent. of the subvention has gone in wages up to that period, and less than 10 per cent. had gone in the shape of profits to the owners. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carmarthen said that under this subvention it had not been possible to capture markets we had lost, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out that in a small degree we had done this. The exports of coal have increased by 600,000 tons per month as compared with last June, and our output has increased by 3,000,000 tons per month, and I think that shows that our export trade has considerably improved.
I think I have now answered most of the points which have been raised in the Debate. The hon. Member for Spennymoor (Mr. Batey) said that a certain number of pits had closed down in Durham, even under the subvention. I know that under the conditions prevailing in July a large number did close down, but I think it is clear that but for the subvention many more pits would have
closed down. With regard to what may happen in May the Government are very carefully considering that position, but at the present moment it is too early for any announcement to be made, but I can assure hon. Members that there will be no want of real thought and forethought given to the very difficult and uncertain position at which we may arrive in May next. One thing I hope is that the same spirit and goodwill which has been shown in this House will spread throughout the country, and I welcome this Debate and the speeches which have been made because I think they will help to improve that feeling.
The hon. Member for Barnard Castle (Lieut.-Colonel Headlam) said the great thing we want to do is to try and keep politics out of this question. This is a great matter of national interest, and we should try to keep bias and political feeling and bitterness out of a question of this kind. The country expects after this enormous sum of money has had to be found by the taxpayer in the interests of a national industry that this nine months' period will be used by both sides of the industry to make an earnest effort to arrive at a settlement. The country will never forgive the mining industry if, at the end of nine months, after all this enormous sum of money has been spent, they find the owners and the men remaining in the same position of sullen hostility in which they found them in July last. I hope the influence of this Debate will go out far and wide into the country, and that, long before the Commission has reported, there will be indications that owners and men are getting together and trying to settle their problems for themselves. The Commission can do a great deal, and I hope the results of its work will be very valuable, but there is one thing that would be far better than any recommendations of the Commission, and that would be a joint recommendation from the two hostile sides in the industry itself. If we can get that spirit working, and then carry out any recommendations which the Commission may make in the light of and in view of that spirit, I hope we may avoid that terrible struggle which some are too anxious to predict as certain to happen next May. I hope we may be able to avoid any struggle of that kind, and, if so, I think the House will be
right in saying that this expenditure, high as it is, has not Been unjustified.

Mr. STEPHEN WALSH: I do not know that I have ever been present at a discussion in which a better temper has been exhibited all round, except, perhaps, in the opening speech of the right hon. Gentleman responsible for the proposal that is now before the Committee. One did not take down his exact words, but one could not help noting the spirit that permeated his speech. When he spoke of a spirit of extortion and ransom, and of the workpeople holding a menace over the nation, I really wondered if, with all his knowledge, he had made himself acquainted with the actual conditions of the industry at the time when the subsidy was first proposed. It ought never to be forgotten that the workpeople made no demands at all. It was not they who pressed extortionate demands upon the House of Commons; it was not they who made any demands upon the employers. The Secretary for Mines knows perfectly well that, twelve months earlier, a Commission sat, and, as the result of that Commission, miners' wages were somewhat raised. But will it be believed that the miners' wages, even in July last, before the employers' proposals had been submitted, were, certainly in 75 per cent. of the cases, not merely semi-starvation, but positively starvation wages?
Because this spirit which is animating members of the Committee this afternoon is so desirable to maintain, and in order to maintain that spirit and to enable hon. Members to see what are the essential facts of the situation, I would risk them just for a moment or two to consider my own county. Lancashire is a great mining county, and contains a great mining population. Probably one fourth of that mining population work at the coal face, hewing the coal; but three-fourths will be engaged in the work of distribution and in the work of repairs on the surface and underground. Before the employers made any proposals at all in July, in the case of the people engaged in repair work below ground— all able-bodied men, able in every sense of the word, and, in thousands of case?, having families to maintain—the highest amount they were able to receive was Ss. 9d. a day. Putting it at the highest, it is impossible for the pits to work throughout the year more than five days
a week. That is under the very best conditions. In the ordinary way, in any normal year, not more than nine days a fortnight can possibly be worked. Taking into account weather conditions, conditions of transport on the railways, the time broken for Christmas and New Year holidays, and the hundred and one occasions that will present themselves to the minds of hon. Members more readily than I can describe them, it may be taken that a man is able to do very well indeed if he can put in 10 days a fortnight, or five days a week, and normally the average working time is about nine days a fortnight.
Taking the case of a workman with 8s. 9d. a day, working nine days in a fortnight, he has £3 18s. 9d., or 39s. a week, before any stoppages go out. He has to pay, at the least, from 7 to 9 per cent. of that in necessary stoppages— health insurance, unemployment insurance, the charges for his lamp, and all those charges which, though small in themselves, total up to a very considerable sum. That able-bodied workman in Lancashire, putting in all the time that is open to him, would not be able to take more than 35s. a week, upon which he has to maintain himself, his wife and his family. That was up to the 1st July last. Then the employers came forward with a proposal which, in its stark outline, meant a 25 per cent. reduction in wages; and yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke in a tone indicating—I am sure that must be the indication to the minds of hon. Members—that it was we, the workpeople's representatives, who were holding the nation up to ransom.
Those conditions were conditions, not merely of semi-starvation, but conditions of complete starvation. What possible use is it, in such circumstances as that, saying, "Come together and try to settle"? No body of men on the face of the earth is entitled to any consideration that would not resist such infamous proposals as were submitted last July. For years, in the coal-mining industry, we have been undergoing a process of reduction of wages and of sacrifice utterly unequalled in the annals of history. Will hon. Members believe that 50 per cent. of the wages have gone since 1921? The wages of the day-wage hand in the Lancashire mines in March, 1921, were
a little over 14s. a day. At present, apart from the subsistence wage, they are 1s. a day, and in the case of the surface hands they are often lower. Men who do very necessary work, very arduous work, are receiving 1s. or 1s. 3d. a day less than the figures I have just quoted to the Committee. We did not make any demand on the owners; we did not make any demand on the House of Commons; we simply said, as every self-respecting body of men must say, that wages have been so pressed down as to make decent living conditions impossible, and we would resist any further downward process. To talk about extortion, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer did, and to talk about ransom, is simply to trifle with the English language.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke of both sides making equality of sacrifice, and here, again, it is desirable that hon. Members should be acquainted with the equality of sacrifice that the employers have made in the coil-mining industry. I quite admit that the Secretary for Mines is right in saying that we cannot. go into the case of individual pits or into district settlements in these matters —-we have to take the result of the industry as a whole. Let me tell hon. Members that, during the 3½ years from July, 1921, to the end of 1924, the admitted trading profits of the employers were £56,500,000, or at the rate of £16,000,000 a year. Putting it at the highest, there is not a colliery owner living to-day who would say there was more than £180,000,000 invested as capital in the industry. I am putting it very high; in my honest opinion there is nothing like that amount. Taking, however, the statement of the most fervent advocate of the employers, he would not put it at more than £180,000.000, and they had £16,000,000 each year to the end of 1921. They were making that £16,000,000 upon a capital, putting it at the very highest figure, of £180,000,000, which is practically 9 per cent. Perhaps I may digress a little to say that that is after every possible item of expenditure has been met. You cannot conceive of anything that is not first of all paid before those trading profits are reached—royalty rates, local rates, insurances, think of any item you may that goes to make expenditure, and, when that is all met, there is a sum of £56,500,000 left in the 3½ years.
That is the equality of sacrifice of which the colliery owners were capable.
8.0 P.M.
What happened in those three and a-half years to the miners? Wages in every mining district in the kingdom, with, I think, one possible exception—the Eastern area—were down to the minimum. In the wonderful mining region of South Wales the minimum wage had been reached in November, 1921, and we in Lancashire had reached the minimum wage in May, 1922. In every area the wages got down so low that what is known as a subsistence allowance had to be added to enable the people to live at all. I ask hon. Members to think of the meaning of the term "subsistence allowance." We had reached in every area, with one exception, in the mines in the kingdom a condition of things in which it was absolutely impossible to live a decent life. It is quite true, and there is not a single one of us will deny it, that in many cases the coal hewer gets a decent wage, but the vast mass of the workers in the mines are incapable of raising their wages. However great the output, their wages stand still and there are 70 per cent. of those workers who are incapable of receiving any advance, and it is these wages that are pressed down to the point I have just described. What really can we expect from a right hon. Gentleman who talks about equality of sacrifice under such conditions? I can only assume that he did not know really what the conditions were. I have mentioned the profits of the employers, I have mentioned the wages of the men, and I have referred to equality of sacrifice, and I ask hon. Members to think what equality of sacrifice there can be under such conditions. It is said in the White Paper that this subsidy is in aid of wages. It is not really in aid of wages at all. It is in aid of profits.

Colonel LANE-FOX: It has gone to wages.

Mr. WALSH: My right hon. Friend, I am quite sure, thinks it has gone to wages but it is only on the distinct understanding that the right is conceded to the employers of the ratio of 13 to 87, that is, before the calculation is made upon which the subsidy is to be paid the employers' right to 15 per cent. of the amount represented in wages has first of all to be conceded. But we do not con-
cede that at all. The result is that in hundreds of cases, as can easily be proved, collieries making big profits already and in some cases vast profits, are receiving the subsidy. Is that going in aid of wages? This means, in scores and scores and hundreds of cases, that these employers could pay the wages they were paying in July last without any subsidy at all. Yet because of the calculation which first of all states—and here the right hon. Gentleman, I think, has hardly realised the condition upon which the subsidy is paid—and implies at the very commencement that, after all expenses are paid, the ratio of 13 to 87 is to be the right of the employers. That is really 15 per cent. of the total wage fund and that really has this result, that in the case of hundreds of prosperous collieries who can pay the wages, and in my opinion were willing to pay them had the subsidy not come along, they are now receiving in addition to the handsome profits they are making, the subsidy a? well. Will anybody say that that is going to the aid of wages? Of course, it is clearly a travesty of the actual facts to say that.
We are as desirous in the coal mining industry of preserving peace, of looking forward to the higher interests of the nation, and of helping the higher interests of the community along as any body of men in this nation, and we have prove it continuously. Why, in my own county, when the War broke out, both employers and workmen met together, and we said, "No matter what happens, there shall be no stoppage of work in this county." From 1914 right to the end of the War, and for six months afterwards, we agreed there should be no interference with work of any kind. Let me say, to the honour of employers, that they scrupulously carried out their side of the bargain, and so did we. For years in the English conciliation area we went on without any serious interference with work, but then conditions were pressed upon the men which reduced them to a state of actual starvation. Then the right hon. Gentleman who, I am sure, cannot possibly understand the situation —I am speaking of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and not of the Secretary for Mines—I am quite sure he could not have used the words "extortion," "ransom" and "menace to the nation" had he known what the real facts were.
Now we believe that having regard to the whole situation the Government did the right and only thing that it could have done at that time. Peace in a great nation such as this and in a great industry upon which all the rest depend, was the first of all interests. Even if the Government did come to the conclusion at the last moment and at the last hour, still in my opinion, and in our opinion they did the right thing. They are doing the right thing now. I believe myself there is justification for the optimism that many Members feel. The darkest hour is that before the dawn, and I sincerely believe that we have passed the darkest hour and that things will brighten. In any case, I am quite sure that with the facts which have been submitted to the House this afternoon, and with the full facts which can easily be obtained in the ensuing two or three months, it will be seen that it is in the highest interest of the State itself that this great industry should not be carried an at the expense of a degraded and impoverished people.

Mr. RAINE: In anything that I say I shall endeavour to maintain the high level which has characterised this Debate because, having been connected in the coal trade for so many years, I like others, feel the seriousness of the situation and would only be too pleased if some settlement is reached. Like most people I strongly object to subsidies, but as time goes on I cannot help thinking that the Government were very wise in the step they took. They were up against a very serious position. We are still living in abnormal times, and I think they were wise in the step they took, and we can only hope the optimism which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has expressed may be realised before next May.
Unfortunately, we have not got the control of the world markets for coal in the way we used to have. I should like very briefly to make a few observations upon this question, because I would remind hon. Members that the export trade represents, roughly, one-third of the coal trade in this country. In the early summer I had the opportunity of visiting Poland, and along with some other Members saw the coal areas. We had the opportunity of seeing some
of the coalfields, examining the pits and going down them to examine the coal, and we were struck with the quality of the coal, with its screening and general cleanliness. We made inquiries into the analysis and found that it would compare very favourably with most others.
Unfortunately, at the present time there is an economic war between Germany and Poland. The consequence is that Poland is not allowed to send coal into Germany, which is the natural outlet for it. These coals, in consequence, are being sent a very long distance by rail at an uneconomic rate to Danzig, and from there they are being shipped to Copenhagen, Denmark, Sweden and to other places. We hope this position of affairs will soon pass; away, but, in the meantime, it is causing loss of trade in this country.
During the recent Recess, while in Italy, I had the opportunity of making inquiries with regard to the Russian coal that is being sent there, and I found they stated the quality was Al. I had the opportunity of looking over certain of the analyses and found that they compared favourably with any of our coal I merely mention these facts, which have come to my knowledge first hand, to show that we have not got the entire control of the coal market. One or two facts have come out during the past fortnight which may be of interest to the House in making up its mind on this question, because it is a many-sided question. The Westphalian syndicate has issued what is practically a command to its various customers, saying they are not to buy English coal in future without their authority. The German Government is severely restricting its licences under which coal is now imported into the country, and I was told on good authority only yesterday that at Hamburg the quantity which is going to be allowed in next month is 100,000 tons less than the quantity for this month. Some of these foreign countries which used to import English coal entirely are now giving a preference to German coal in particular, because they find in most instances that they get better results from these coals. Yesterday I saw a letter setting out the requirements of a gas works in the South of Sweden, which hitherto had taken coal from Durham entirely. The inquiry was for two cargoes,
one of which was to be Westphalian and the other might be Durham, but they reserved the right to buy one cargo or the other.
I am not going to weary the House, but only wanted to give first-hand information, and to express the hope that this continuance of the amount of the subsidies by £9,000,000 may be the end of the subsidy, and that we may, before the end of that time, have peace in the coalfields.

Mr. MacLAREN: I should not have intervened were it not that the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to make some rather pointed remarks on some observations I made during the course of his speech. He gave us a sharp homily on the immutability of economic laws. I should have thought a man who was strongly convinced in his own mind of the immutability of economic law would show consistency by having a constant political faith of his own, instead of which I know no public man who has done more gyrations from one party to another. I quite agree with anyone who says that economic law knows no party, and is not influenced by any flood or ebb of political party, but I wish those who give us these lectures would be a little more consistent and show that they appreciate the truth of the statements they make so glibly. We were reminded during the right hon. Gentleman's speech that pessimism was a danger to the country. It was rather interesting to watch him posing as an optimist while all the time running through his speech one could hear the dull note of pessimism. I do not wish it to be thought for a moment that those who criticise the present conduct of the Government are naturally pessimistic. In fact I think there is more danger in false optimism than in pessimism under certain circumstances. Let us look facts boldly in the face. We are spending, let us say, £19,000,000 to pay for this hiatus—for that is all it is—in the conflict in the coal mines. I have no doubt that money will be spent.
Meantime we have a Commission sitting which, we are told, may come to some finding that will lead us out of this morass. I do not believe the Commission is going to formulate a policy which this Government can pursue and lead to peace. I have listened to one Coal Commission after another. What has happened?
The Commission comes to certain findings, but they may as well never have sat at all for all the influence it has on Governmental action. The Chancellor of the Exchequer told us that if the Commission now sitting formulates a given policy he is quite sure the Government will give it legislative effect. Then he linked up that idea with the other plea. There has been far too much of this. He says " Let us unite to solve the problem," as if there were no vested interests to challenge. I have heard it said to-day on this side, "Let us have peace and good will upon earth." You cannot, as long as the land monopoly holds. [Laughter.] It is all very well to laugh. It is all very nice. You have the coal embedded in the soil of the country and we have had one Commission after another—Sir Richard Redmayne telling you he knows of case after case, where attempts have been made to exploit good seams of coal but the owners refuse to allow them to be used, while miners and mining companies were forced to go on to less than the margin of cultivation, taking coal out of dangerous seams, and that coal was an uneconomic proposition. I put that before the Minister. I put it to the Government—and I hope my voice will reach them wherever they are—that you cannot solve this question of the coal problem until you deal with this immoral and indecent ownership of a mineral which was put there by the hands of God Almighty. I wish hon. Members would go and see these things for themselves. There are mines working in my district—

Captain HOPE: I have as many mines in my division as you have in yours.

Mr. MacLAREN: I will give the hon. and gallant Gentleman an illustration of what I mean. There are miners in my division who have to travel a considerable distance from the shaft to get to the workings, and the moment they leave the pit shaft they are turning their backs on rich seams of coal which they cannot touch because the owner says they must not. Then they travel all this distance. There are overhead charges in the making of the roadways and convoying the coal from the face to the shaft, all adding to the cost, much more than would be necessary if the other seams were free for exploitation. It has been pointed out truly that you cannot hope to face this issue
and deal with it effectively so long as you have two or three thousand different interests in different mines under different circumstances. This mining problem must be dealt with as a national problem, and it cannot be dealt with as a national problem until yon deal with the question of the ownership of the minerals under the land. I dare say the Minister of Mines could not tell us what are the possibilities of the coal still embedded in the earth. It is interesting to notice that when any question of the taxation of land come up we are always told, "You cannot tax land values because you cannot formulate a valuation of ungotten minerals." I am only advancing that to show that there are in this country enormous seams of coal which our miners might be exploiting with less overhead charges than the coal they are exploiting now. That is entirely due to the exactions imposed by the land monopoly.
You may have a thousand Commissions, and they may talk as they will on the other side about goodwill, but until we face the fact boldly that there are vested interests in this industry which are keeping it from developing upon sound lines, and deal with them effectively, there is going to be one crisis after another, and by next May this is what you will have. Yon will have a Commission which cannot give you a clear, definite policy. You will have a Government faced, as the Chancellor clearly said to-day, with disaster on the one hand or prosperity on the other. I can see no way out of this impasse, because I do not see the parties to the struggle getting down to the basic causes of the struggle. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a little brutal in the way he puts things. I am not taking advantage of him, but I wish he were here. He said this was a subsidy to wages. Then he was willing to make a little concession, and he said it was also a subsidy to those who were running the mines, but not a word was said about the regularised, constant subsidy to royalty owners all the time. Whether a mine has a good running or a bad running, the first charge is the royalties, which are a subsidy to the landlords from the beginning to the end. When we are told there are malingerers who take the dole, malingerers who get round various Acts of Parliament, who
sponge on the State, I wonder what the landowners of England are thinking about. They do not require to sponge or to go before the unemployment committee. They can got to their hunt, they can go to Monte Carlo, they can go to Heaven or the other place. Their royalties are secured, even by a subsidy, in their absence.
I know that hon. Members opposite are here to secure landlordism, to protect it, to give it, as they did last year, a subsidy of 75 per cent. on the rates. [Interruption.] I heard a remark that I did not catch. I wish their criticisms would come out boldly. These royalties are maintained by the subsidy, and the landowner who renders no service for the royalties he takes is a mean and contemptible parisite, putting his hands forward and taking out of the subsidy the royalties guaranteed by the taxpayers. I want the Chancellor of the Exchequer to realise that when he is talking about subsidising wages he should be a little more honest and admit that it is a subsidy to the monopolists of the country. In these Debates we discuss certain problems which may arise, and we do so as though these problems were in watertight compartments by themselves. I have mines in my own division, and for every ton of output the local assessor is standing at the pit waiting. When it comes up he puts a rate on it, a penalty for the mine having produced it at all. This system of rating would hinder the best mine from becoming a paying proposition. When discussions arise as to competition with this country from foreign producers and sellers of coal, people seem to forget the menacing effect of local taxation on coal in this country. Before this matter can be properly analysed and appreciated, we have to find out what are the overhead charges in foreign countries as against the overhead charges levied on coal production in this country.
I went to a mine in my own division, which is going to be closed down, and in an interview with the manager I asked what were the overhead charges. He spoke about the cost of pumping water, and then he said. "Here are the rates for last year, £8,000." A dead weight upon the industry. If a mine closes down either through the men going on strike or because there is a lock-out, the coalowner can go to the local assessment authority,
under the present rating system, and ask for a reduction in the amount of the rates, because they are not producing coal, but the moment coal comes up to the surface rates are levied, and round the corner the landowners are waiting for their subsidy of 75 per cent. in regard to their land.

Colonel LANE-FOX: On a point of Order. Is this argument relevant?

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Captain FitzRoy): The points which the hon. Member is making would undoubtedly require legislation. He would be out of order in developing that argument on this Debate. So long as he only touches on the points he is in order, but if he seems to argue them, I shall have to stop him.

Mr. MacLAREN: I hope you will not be too stringent with me on this matter, because I feel very keenly about it. I want, if I can to emphasise the contrasts which I have in mind in regard to the situation.

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member may feel very keenly, but that would not justify his being out of order.

Mr. MacLAREN: I am trying to keep in order as far as I can. I do hope you will not be too stringent with me.

Mr. STEPHEN: The Secretary for Mines in his speech wandered all over the country.

Mr. MacLAREN: We are being asked to vote many more millions of money which, in my opinion, is money being spent on a futility. If the money were being spent and in the interval a constructive policy was being formulated which would save this country from the crash which is undoubtedly coming next May, I would not make these contrasts. What I am doing now is to point to the inconsistency of the actions of hon. Members opposite. Last week they made great concessions to the very monopoly which is crippling the mining industry, and they come to us to-day and tell us that this crash which may come in May can be averted if we will all be good boys, join hands, sing some Christian hymns, and then we shall all be happy ever after. Such an appeal is not only childish, but futile. It is playing with the confidence of the distressed public outside. You cannot solve this problem of
the mines until you challenge the ownership of the raw materials of the earth which are now in private hands, until you do something to encourage the industry of mining by removing the enormous burden of rates which fall upon mining development in this country, until you relieve the industry of the pressure of taxation and rates which now fall so heavily upon it, and until there is some national control, instead of allowing the control to remain in private hands.
I do not mean by that that the State should own every mine, and run every mine, but that the State should have some superior control over the mineral deposits of this country, so that some co-ordination can be carried out, not only in one part of the country, but all over the country, so that we can form a national policy as to the exploitation of the mines. I see no other way out of the difficulty. To go on in this way, hoping for peace, while you are seeking none, and talking about peace while you ace placating vested interests, is futile. At a time like this, when the country cannot afford it, you are proceeding to throw millions away. The Chancellor of the Exchequer asks, "Will anyone say that we have not done the right thing? Will anyone say that the Government made a mistake in the policy they pursued in giving these grants of millions last year? "He is asking the question too soon. Let him ask that question when we come to May, and not until then. We are no nearer peace to-night than we were when the lock-out or strike was threatened, but rather worse. We are spending huge sums of public money for no object. I cannot help saying that I cannot see the Coal Commission coming to any solution.

Mr. HARDIE: I should not have intervened in the Debate had not certain statements been made which are not true. We are not really in a crisis. What we are suffering from is not so much a crisis as the anarchist state in which we have been getting coal in this country in the past. We have allowed anyone who owns a coalfield to say whether the coal should be taken or not, and the way in which it should be taken. There has been no regulation as to how the coal should be taken. Thick seams have been worked, and the coal sent abroad at a
small price, but at very high profits. Millionaires were made in two or three years. The profits on these thick seams would, in a system worked scientifically, have been retained in the industry in order to meet the higher cost of working the thin seams, and in that way there would have been maintained a level in the price of coal. What we are suffering from is the anarchy and stupidity of all Governments in the past, without exception.
The hon. Member for Mosley (Mr. Hopkinson) seemed to think that because he makes a coal cutting machine for the getting of coal that he knows everything about coalfields. He made a tremendous blunder to-night, and it seemed to me that his view was accepted as being something authentic. It was simply stupidity. He seemed to suggest that in the coal industry in this country, on the one hand, the man who sinks a mine and does not get into clean coal seam, and the mine is not a commercial success, is to become bankrupt, whereas the man in the Yorkshire coalfields who bores into clean, level and untroubled coal is to be subsidised. When you bore there is always a chance of getting down to what is called in Scotland the sow's backs. Are individuals to be penalised because they happen to go down in their boring into something which is going to make difficulties?
What is the use of hon. Members talking about coal being the great basis of British industry, on which the superstructure of trade rests, and yet they tamper with the foundations on which that superstructure rests, in any way in which they can get their grip on it. Take the question of the different coalfields. You have to-day your locked seams in Wales and in Lancashire, and other areas, and you have your free and unlocked seams in big coalfields like Yorkshire. Although the Yorkshire seams are profitable yet we give a subsidy because God put good coal strata there. The Commission appointed might be able to give a report on figures but, having no knowledge of mining, can give no report upon any improvement in coal getting. The relation of this subsidy to mining conditions to-day is very unfair. You cannot use the argument that you can penalise inefficiency. It is not inefficiency where you have natural faults. You could
penalise inefficiency if it were real inefficiency. Why pay 2s. more because you want to put a penalty on an inefficient-man? That is not how engineers would approach the subject. They would say, "We know the standard of efficiency and that needs no subsidy and there will be no subsidy paid to any coalowner who does not bring his pits to that standard. But where natural faults and consequent expense has to be met the case would not be one of subsidising inefficiency but carrying through difficulties that must be faced if we are to take out all our coal." That would be common sense, but of course we do not expect common sense from a Tory Government.

Mr. SAKLATVALA: The whole problem to-day is not so much the granting of the money to which this House has already committed itself, as the problem of what is to happen next May. The main question is all the time being evaded. The subsidy or some sort of artificial assistance becomes necessary, because there is an artificial competition produced in the coal trade of this country, and in wages especially. There are citizens residing in this country, maintained and protected by the taxes and the Army and Navy of this country, who possess coal mines in Africa and India and China , where they produce coal at 5s. per ton or less at the pit's mouth by paying slave wages. While that position lasts it is clear that European miners are face to face with the necessity of bringing down their wages, and then the British miner in turn finds himself in the same situation. I do not wish to dilate upon the whole subject of how this glaring evil, which is protected by the Government, can be remedied, but I assert that there are very simple and efficient remedies for preventing investors and financiers from blacklegging the labour of this country by employing slave labour in other parts of the world. Unless that is done the crisis in the coal area will not be altered.
I offer another practical suggestion to the Government in regard to their appeal for goodwill. Goodwill cannot be produced by some members of the Government trying to look like baa-lambs in this House and asking for mercy and nice relations and so on. If they mean goodwill they will have to work for goodwill. They will have to give up their ill-will towards the working classes, and
they will have to undo many things which they have done during the past few weeks. Rightly or wrongly, the miners and the workers generally are full of suspicion that some of the actions of the Government are directly connected with an intention to bring undue pressure to bear on the miners. It is the duty of the Government to show their readiness to make larger contributions towards goodwill by suppressing the O.M.S. If they cannot entirely suppress it —

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: That has certainly nothing whatever to do with the coal subsidy.

Mr. SAKLATVALA: Goodwill was discussed for a long time this afternoon. The Government cannot put up 167 miners for prosecution and imprisonment, and then say, "Give us goodwill. We want to be at peace." The Government cannot put 12 Communists in prison and —

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: That is another subject which we cannot discuss to-night.

Mr. SAKLATVALA: Among the rank and file in the mining areas there is an impression that all these Measures of the Government are taken in advance in order to bring undue pressure to bear on the miners when the Government wish to enforce a wage reduction in May. The public will examine the actions of the Government much more minutely than is anticipated, and they will not listen to mere sing-song phrases used in this House. Actions speak louder than words. The public will say, "We want actions of goodwill from the Government."

Mr. SCRYMGEOUR: I have listened to speeches from those who have at their finger-ends the case of the workers in the coal industry, and have heard a recital of the conditions under which the miners have daily to face the great risk of entering the bowels of the earth in order to find the requisite for keeping the home fires burning. I have learned that an appeal had to be made for a mere subsistence wage to keep the miners alive. I put those facts against a profit of about £16,000,000 per annum acquired by those who own the mines, and I have only one thought to express. From time to time we have mining disasters, and throughout the land the Press tells the sorrowful
story, scenes are described by able journalists, and pictures are published.
Many a time, I am confident, readers of these descriptions have come back to the question that we are discussing to-night. I am confident that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer would give more scope to his heart than to his head he would never dream of talking about inequality of sacrifice, except by emphasising that which any ordinary man can realise very deeply. The inequality has unfortunately operated against those men who take such tremendous risks and it is a deliberate insult for any man on the Treasury Bench to make an allusion of the kind which has been made. No records of the War give finer examples of the best type of bravery and moral courage than are to be found in connection with mining disasters—examples of Christian loyalty of heart on the part of these men towards their fellow sufferers. All parties concerned in this matter should make a coalition to get to the depths of the question just as the miner goes down to the depths of the mine. It is not for want of brains and capacity to settle this question that it is unsettled but for want of facing those cold materialistic interests which has prevented a settlement and have prevented the nation from expressing in practical fashion the feeling on this matter which I am sure lies at the nation's heart.

CLASS 6.

BRITISH EMPIRE EXHIBITION GUARANTEE.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £1,100,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charges which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1926, for defraying the liability under the Government Guarantee in respect of any loss which may result from the holding of the British Empire Exhibition under the British Empire Exhibition (Guarantee) Acts, 1920 to 1925.

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL (Secretary, Overseas Trade Department): I wish to give the Committee in broad outline an explanation of this Vote. It will be within the recollection of many hon. Members that in 1920, following on the granting of permisson by the House, there was a guarantee by the then Government of £100,000 for the purposes of this national exhibition. in 1924 a further sum of £500,000 was, with the permission of the
House of Commons, to be guaranteed and a Resolution was introduced. But, before the Bill could be brought in, a dissolution took place, and it was my privilege in the early part of this year to ask the House of Commons for permission to guarantee £600,000. In the time that had elapsed between the date on which it was decided to guarantee the further £500,000—which with the £100,000 made the. £600,000—a decision was arrived at by which the exhibition was to be carried on for a further year, and it was found necessary to add a further £500,000 to the £600,000 already settled upon; and when I brought in the Resolution in February last the total amount was £1,100,000.
I have had great assistance from the hon. Member for Rothwell (Mr. Lunn) who preceded me in this office, and I wish to pay my tribute to him. I took up the work which he had been so ably carrying on, and from that date I became in some degree responsible in this matter. When I introduced the Resolution I made a point of warning the Committee that there was no likelihood of a profit being made during the second year of the exhibition, and I said I saw no likelihood whatever of reducing our loss. I warned the Committee at the time, and I am bound to say now that I see no reason to vary that opinion. On the other hand, when I was in some gentle degree challenged by the Committee as to whether, having got £1,100,000, I would come down to the House again and ask for more, I said I did not intend to do so. I am glad to tell the Committee here and now that I have kept within the limits of that £1,100,000. As a matter of fact, it is possible—though I do not pledge myself—that I may be able to hand back to the Treasury a small sum out of that £1,100,000. The fact remains that I have carried out the undertaking which I gave when I asked for permission to guarantee this sum, and I have not exceeded it by one farthing.
It may puzzle hon. Members to find this Supplementary Estimate presented on the present occasion, and they may be under the misapprehension that this is a fresh sum, but such is not the case. I asked and obtained from Parliament in May of this year permission to guarantee this sum, but we have not paid
a penny of it yet. I have come now to ask the permission of the Committee and of Parliament to pay the sum. In other words, we had permission to guarantee the amount; the amount has now become due, and we ask the necessary permission to pay it. A call has been made, as the Committee is aware, on the guarantors. The exhibition closed a few weeks ago; liquidators have been appointed; and auditors have been looking into the accounts. A full and detailed statement of the accounts has been issued to private guarantors and to us. I have obtained certified copies of these detailed accounts, and have had them placed in the Library so that hon. Members may cross-examine me in detail if they so desire. We seek this permission, as a result of the call made upon the guarantors to pay 15s. in the £ of their guarantee. That is only an interim call. I believe another call will be made, and it may be that the other 5s. in the £ will be called in. What the amount will be when all the accounts are finished I cannot tell, neither can the auditors tell.
What we desire to do is to pay at the earliest possible moment the money which we are called upon to pay out of the public purse, and it is desirable that the other guarantors should pay their calls equally quickly for the simple reason that while the money remains unpaid, interest is running against the private guarantors and ourselves, and as soon as we pay so soon will that charge be reduced. I am asking for permission to pay the whole amount, but as I have said, we shall not pay that unless and until we are called upon to pay in full and the difference between the 75 per cent. for which a call has been made and the total amount will remain in the Treasury. When the accounts have been finally settled, whatever sum has not been called upon will go back into the public purse. I wish to correct a slight misprint in the Supplementary Estimate which is before the Committee. On page 3, against the figure of £1,842,806 will be seen the words " Deficiency on the 1924 Exhibition, up to 5th December, 1925." That should be "December, 1924'' and I mention this in order that hon. Members may not be confused.
I will try in the time at my disposal to visualise the net result of the exhibition. I think the Committee will be astonished
at the largeness of the receipts of the exhibition. I was certainly astonished myself. No less a sum than £2,815,000 has been received by the exhibition in two years. The running costs of the exhibition were, in round figures, £1,660,000. That is to say, on the figures of the actual running cost and the receipts, a profit was made of over £1,150,000 for the two years. But we are faced with the fact of capital charges. If it was a case of running a factory or a business, we could put revenue aside for capital expenditure, and redeem it or amortise it over a certain number of years—20 years, it may be. It is not an unusual thing, with a factory, to amortise over 20 years, and I believe that where buildings are concerned they are amortised over a period of 30 years; but in this particular case it is absolutely necessary to repay the whole of the capital expenditure in two years. The consequence is that the whole of our running profits have to be devoted to repaying the capital outlay of £2,739,000. That is to say, the whole of that running profit going towards paying off capital outlay, leaves us with a loss, as shown on page 3 of the Supplementary Estimate, of £1,581,905, and that loss would not be as much as it is but for two handicaps which nave been referred to on previous occasions.
During the 156 days of the 1924 exhibition I think that 90 days were rainy days. The amount of damage caused to the exhibition is almost indescribable, the rain rendering the place almost like a morass. damaging everything. and causing a great deal of expense. It also kept people away, so that we had the double handicap. On the one hand, people kept away, and, therefore, did not pay for admission, while, on the other hand, there were the repairs and the expenditure necessary for putting right the damage that the rain did. Then we had some deplorable labour troubles Which added to the expense of carrying on the exhibition. But still there was £1,151,000 made as running profit, which now goes to recoup the capital outlay, leaving us up to the present, as ascertained. with a deficit of £1,581,905. Actually in two years, 22½ Trillion living souls went to see the exhibition, or half the population of Great Britain and Ireland—an immense number of people. I wish to offer my humble thanks for the
great trouble to which Their Majesties the King and the Queen went to make the exhibition prosper. There was no trouble which they did not take in order to help, and we are greatly indebted to them for a good deal of the interest shown in the exhibition and the large number of people who went there. Fancy, 22½ million people visiting the exhibition, and among those, as I think I have heard the right hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas) say, nearly 5,000,000 children had the advantage of learning what they could about the Empire?
I do not think there is very much more to tell the Committee at the moment. I should like to pay my tribute to those on the executive committee, to the board of management, to those who were responsible for the financial administration of the exhibition, to the administrator, and to the staff. In all cases those people who take a hand in helping this great national undertaking to, its end did it as a labour of love, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby was second to none in the amount of trouble he took in putting his shoulder to the wheel in order to make the exhibition a success.
9.0 P.M.
I am sure the Committee would also like me to say this with regard to the private guarantors. A large number of rich and poor people, who could not possibly get the slightest private profit out of risking their money, were willing to come and guarantee a large sum for this exhibition out of their private means, and I would certainly like to pay my humble tribute to them. They can rest assured that they have done a good work, and they have done an immense service, not only to the home country, but to the Empire as a whole. Australia has expressed herself through her leading men as being very pleased with the material results that have come to Australia through the trade brought by the exhibition. The people of New Zealand have, through the lips of their own representatives, told me personally that the last year, 1925, has done them much good, and that they have had many inquiries to brighten their trade, and have materially benefited. The same can be said about Canada. Therefore, the purposes for which the exhibition was erected have, I think, been
fully justified. I do not wish to dwell entirely on the financial aspect, because there are things which money cannot represent. And, quite apart from the money, I would like to say as strongly as I can that the effect of the education and of the knowledge disseminated about the Dominions and Colonies has been beyond all words beneficial. But, so far as the £1,100.000 for which I am now-asking is concerned, I look upon it as a perfectly sound and certainly remunerative investment.

Mr. LUNN: While in the Debate on the coal subsidy, which has just closed, everybody was thinking, not so much of the £19,000,000 we were asked to find as of the future of the industry, in this Supplementary Estimate we are dealing with the past. The time has arrived when the exhibition has come to a close, and we have to consider and reflect upon what has taken place, and what should be our attitude with regard to the happenings of the past two years. The hon. Gentleman who has spoken for the Government upon this subject has been very brief, and has certainly not given the Committee very much information with regard to the figures that have been supplied on paper, nor has ho for the benefit of the Committee in any way analysed them. There is really only one question upon that mailer which I would like to ask the hon. Gentleman, and that is whether or not the authorities have arrived at a reserve price for the land and buildings at Wembley, what is the reserve price, if they have, and, if not, have the Government or the authorities at Wembley any intentions with regard to the future of these magnificent, buildings and this wonderful site so near to the great Metropolis? [An HON. MEMBER: "Gretna!"] I think possibly it may be a repetition of Gretna.
It has been admitted by many people that there has been a good deal of extravagance at Wembley, that it is likely that there has been some recklessness in the spending of money, and to-day and for some few days there has been a demand put forward for an inquiry into this matter. I should like to know what the Government have in their mind with regard to an inquiry regarding the conduct of the exhibition and the future of the buildings. Personally, I have no
objection. I think it might be to the good of the nation to have an inquiry, and to know the full facts, or clear away any misapprehension, if such there be, in the minds of people with regard to extravagance or recknessness as to money. But I agree with the hon. Gentleman absolutely with regard to the loss on the exhibition. Did anybody ever dream that it would be a profit-making concern from a financial point of view? I have never heard anyone say it was likely to make a profit. I am perfectly certain in no speech of mine have I ever said so, and even in February last I declared that nearly, though I hoped not the whole of the £1,100,000 would be necessary to meet the cost of the Government. I regarded it as almost certain that money would have to be provided for the exhibition. The generosity of the guarantors has never been appreciated so much as it should be by this House or by the country. They are far too few in number who came forward as guarantors, but the few who did come forward, I think, should be appreciated for their generosity and for their quietness at this moment, when this matter is under discussion in the Press and in the country.
Now, what has the exhibition done? I had some difficulty at the beginning of 1924 with regard to the labour conditions at Wembley. I tried to settle them. I did not altogether succeed. I would have-liked to have succeeded, and seen the difficulties removed at that time, and the exhibition proceed without any idea of differences or disagreements on the part of employers and workmen. But I do not know that any better tribute was paid to the exhibition than in a memorandum I received, dealing in part with that particular matter of the exhibition labour conditions and the exhibition, from the British Trade Union Congress and the British Labour party. This memorandum was sent to me by a man highly respected in the trade union movement, and who has just passed away—Mr. Fred Bramley. These are paragraphs from the memorandum:
The British Empire Exhibition is admittedly the most representative and all-embracing example of the extent, the power and the influence of the industry, commerce, art and general life of the. nations included in the British Commonwealth.
Whatever defects it may possess, the exhibition is certainly commanding the attention of the people in these islands as no
other exhibition has attained since 1851, and the place it has occupied in the minds or thousands of our British kindred overseas marks it out as altogether unique.
In the very nature of the case, it has been an expression of commercial private enterprise combined with national interest, just as its basis of finance has been a combination of Government guarantees with private subscript ions.
It was not an effort in Socialism at all. It has not been controlled in any way by the Government. It has been private enterprise with Government guarantees, even without Government control, and I feel, just as I felt when the last Vote was before the House, that if the Government have to be guarantors to the extent of £1,000,000 either for industry or exhibitions, the Government ought to be represented and have a voice in dealing with the control of matters of this sort. I maintain that there might then have been something better than what has been the position up to now. But as one who feels quite proud of the exhibition, and proud of the work it has done, I give my support personally—I am not speaking for my party, or anybody else, except myself— and I have all the time given my support to the exhibition. There is not a single show that has appeared in the Stadium I have not seen either last year or this year, and I believe on many occasions I have visited every pavilion on the ground at Wembley. It has brought together Dominion representatives and our own people to the number of 22,000,000. It has given to 4,000,000 or more children, most of them, over 12 years of age, an object lesson in geography they could never have got from any other source. It has laid the foundation of a knowledge of the British Empire that most of us on this side never had an opportunity of getting, and perhaps have no likelihood of getting such as we got in tabloid form at Wembley. It has Been supported by every Dominion and Colony. It has shown us the wonderful power and the picture of each Dominion and Colony, its people and resources.
What is even more than that, in 1924 it showed to us the skill and technique of British workmen. There has never been a show in any part of the world like that in the Palace of Engineering, and I have no patience with people who decry British workmen and British workmanship. There are no workmen in the
world and no skill to equal them, and there is no country that can put a show before the world like that in the Palace of Engineering last year. We have not got to the end of what has been done by Wembley with regard to our trade, but I am quite sure, as I heard expressed by a member of the Imperial Economic Committee the other night, before the Commonwealth Group, that it has had some effect upon the increasing trade with our Dominions. In 1913, the Empire share of British exports was 347 per cent. In the first five months of 1925 it was 39 per cent., and with the addition of the Irish Free State it was 435 per cent. I am quite satisfied the Empire Exhibition has had a good deal to do with that, and if it is to increase we shall see, although we may never quite clearly see, the effect of the exhibition upon the development of trade between this country and the Dominions overseas.
Take the matter of employment. It has been a great relief scheme for employment in this country. For many, many months before it opened there were something like 20,000 people employed on the ground at Wembley. During the exhibition in 1924, and again in 1925, something like 22,000 people have been employed there. Can we measure what that has meant in the saving of unemployment relief, in the provision of work for these people who were largely taken from the live registers at the Employment Exchanges? What has been paid in wages at Wembley? We have not the figures accurately before us. What has been paid in rates and taxes, and in Entertainment Tax, and what also has been the indirect payment in Income Tax and in other ways from those who have been connected with the exhibition?
These are not in the accounts of the exhibition. Still, they have something to do with the running of the exhibition, and though they are invisible for the moment they should be considered when we are dealing with this particular matter. There is in addition what the Dominions Governments have spent in this country through the exhibition in one way or another in their buildings during 1925. I have recently been to one of the oldest of the colonies of the British Empire, Newfoundland, which was the first to offer to come in in the second year. I believe I am safe in
saying that colony has paid the whole of its expenses for 1925. If that had been done by some of the others perhaps this account would have been a little less than what it is.
Personally, I feel that the exhibition has been a wonderful education to our people. It has given us a knowledge of our Dominions overseas that we could not have obtained from any other source. I am sorry it is a loss to the amount of money stated, but personally, I feel that there are no other means of education on these lines that we could have spent the money so wisely on than it has been spent in connection with this exhibition. I hope the Vote will be carried by the House. I feel quite proud of my connection with the exhibition. I have no regrets whatever except the one to which I alluded, that somehow or another it did not arrive at the success that we all wished. It has given an exhibition of the resources of the Dominions and the Colonies to-day which ought to be taken advantage of to the full, and there is the knowledge we have given to the world of the possibilities of the productions and manufactures of this country. I hope that this will have a great effect in restoring our trade conditions: that is the all-important thing for this country.

Mr. MacLAREN: I am sure that the hon. Member for Rothwell (Mr. Lunn) has in his speech given an indication that the money has been well spent. In looking at the accounts there are several items which, it appears to me, require explanation, and I shall be glad if the hon. Gentleman the Secretary, Overseas Trade Department, will explain them. I note that the cost of the site upon which the exhibition was held is said to be £95,080 and some odd shillings. I should like to get some light upon this matter and as to how this site came to cost that money. It would be interesting to know how this value was arrived at, and who got the money for it. There is another point. There is another item of £960 paid for the demolition of the golf club house and store. On looking at page 4 of the accounts, I see that under the heading of "Roads, Bridges and General Drainage," in connection with the improvement of roads outside the exhibition, there is a figure of £19,863. Have these roads been left, or
can we expect to get repayment for their reconditioning, or is the money to be lost? Then there is a last item on page 5. I note that architects', engineers' and surveyors' fees come to £83,062. I should like to have some explanation as to why these fees run to such a figure as this? After all that one might say or like to say about the educational advantages of such an exhibition as this, we are counting upon hon. Gentlemen giving us some details of the matter. I think when the House has been asked to guarantee this money it ought to have been treated more respectfully and given more clear details of the cost of the exhibition. I hope the hon. Gentleman will give the House some reply to the points I have advanced. With all good will to the educational facilities, we ought to run an exhibition of the kind on business lines. I feel that this exhibition ought to have been made a success if a more careful eye had been kept on the organisation and the general enterprises undertaken in the exhibition.

Mr. HARDIE: There have been those who have been good enough to come forward as guarantors, and what I have thought the hon. Gentleman the Secretary, Overseas Trade Department, might tell us is that, not only these, but that other people should also come forward, those who have expressed themselves in favour of doing something for the nation. For instance, I should like to know whether the landlords have been in communication with the exhibition authorities? Have any of them come forward to say: "We do not want to rob the British nation and we will give some of the money back"? I should like to know, when this land was bought, whether the title deeds were produced, showing that those who got the money really owned the land, and that the land was not under escheat to the Crown. There are some things left to be explained, in fact, a great many things. I should like to know whether we started this exhibition business and gave out the contracts to the builders for the buildings what followed? I have always taken the view that when the contracts were given out, the nation ought to know exactly the amount of the contract. I should like to know when these contracts were settled. There is a right hon. Gentleman, who is not here to-night, but he was then Prime Minister, I think. He would be able to tell us
something about it. I should like to know the names of the contractors, and whether they have come forward to give back anything, because if one section of the community is going to come forward and show their great national spirit, why should not those who made profits out of the exhibition also come forward? I shall be very interested if the hon. Gentleman in charge will deal with these questions. If he has not taken a note of them, I will go over them again.

Mr. ROBERT YOUNG: As an ordinary citizen I should like to express my feelings in relation to the exhibition. It was my good fortune to visit the exhibition on quite a number of occasions, and I was certainly very much educated by going there, as I dare say very many people were. The hon. Gentleman who has submitted the Estimate with regard to the finance of the exhibition has pointed out that so far as the takings and all the expenses apart from the capital expenses are concerned, there has been a very large profit on the exhibition. I think we are to be congratulated on that fact. After all, it is perfectly true, as he says, that when you start an undertaking such as the exhibition was, you would require to have an enormous multitude of people going there to wipe out the entire deficit. I do not think it was possible for anyone to assume that there was going to be a surplus on the exhibition. We have to look at it not so much from the point of view of L.S.D. as from what the exhibition meant to the country and the Empire as a whole. One drawback—and I do not say this in the way of criticism because it could not be avoided—was that the exhibition was so far away. Perhaps that was inevitable. If an exhibition of this character is to command public support on the scale of for instance, of the one we had in Glasgow some years ago, it would have been better if the exhibition had been in the heart of the city. In such circumstances many people would have spent their evenings there who felt that the railway fare plus the entrance money was something which kept them from visiting the exhibition. From that point of view we are to be congratulated that the deficit is not so big as it might have been.
If there is to be an inquiry at all, I trust the inquiry will be in the direction of finding out what was wrong so that we
may be prevented from making similar mistakes again. After all, we have to gain by experience and mistakes would occur in a huge undertaking of this kind. It was inevitable. I hope the inquiry, if it takes place, will be in that direction, so that in future exhibitions mistakes may be prevented. I would also like to add my testimony to the educational value of the Exhibition. Many people got there, for the first time, an idea of the British Empire's extent. They found out what it produces and realised what things could be manufactured and produced in the Dominions and Colonies. All that, in my estimation, was to the good. Above and beyond that, we have no right to bother so much about a deficit, unless there are certain things which have to be inquired into, as we have to cast our eyes forward to the next five, 10 or 20 years. I believe the Exhibition will pay in the long run. I believe the result of the Exhibition will mean a very great difference to the products of the Empire coming into this country. I believe that in every way commerce will be benefited and that the industries of our Colonies will be benefited. That will be bound to react in a profitable manner on our own country.
As one who went to the exhibition and saw many of its sights, and some of the shows, although not all, I feel that the exhibition was a very great success indeed. In regard to the second year, there is only one regret I have. Reference has been made to the engineering part of the exhibition. During the first year the engineering exhibits were something marvellous, and beyond what many of us thought possible to produce in one building. My regret was that that was not repeated by the engineering people in the second year. I wish it had been repeated from the point of view of those who wish to understand more about engineering products. Being an engineer myself, I was interested. Taking all in all, I feel the exhibition was well worth having, and that it was to the good of the country and the Empire that such an exhibition should have taken place. With regard to what was said by the hon. Member for Springburn (Mr. Hardie) about land, that is an asset, I should certainly ask that the Government should take very good care that we are not going to dispose of any asset at a price less than the Government or those responsible paid for it. We do not want
to realise, after the exhibition has closed, that what was paid to establish the exhibition was far beyond what it was worth. If we paid so much for the land, its value should have increased by this time, and if it has to be disposed of, the Government should get a larger return. If there is not a larger return, some of us will want to know the reason why. From my point of view, and I believe from the point of view of a very large multitude in the country, the exhibition was very well worth having.

Mr. CLYNES: Before my hon. Friend rises to reply, I would like to say just a few words and to put a question. It would be quite easy for anyone who quarrelled very much to refer to the management of the exhibition, to some aspects of its conduct, and to the fact that we have to face such a substantial loss. After all, the ablest men who were available for the purpose of conceiving and managing this exhibition had its management placed in their hands, in accordance with the general public desire that there should be as little Governmental or Parliamentary interference as possible. It had to be conceived on a scale quite unprecedented, so vast as almost to outrun the experience and perhaps the managerial capacity of the best of men. All these factors must be taken into account when we are thinking of this loss in terms of criticism of the men who had to manage the exhibition. I think, on the whole, the money that we are to find has been well spent. There certainly was no idea of making money out of it. Something else had to be made out of, and that something else, I think, has been made. It certainly had a very educative effect upon the minds of millions of people who visited it, and as we pay many millions for less lasting forms of instruction, we should not grudge the money spent in a direction of instruction which has stimulated trade, and enabled the country to bring parts of the Empire, as it were, here.
I also think that much good was done in procuring orders, in the expenditure of money which had very good effect in relieving unemployment, and in keeping at labour large numbers of men who otherwise would have had to receive their pay in terms of what is called the "dole." I hope my hon. Friend will
answer definitely the two questions put by the hon. Member for Roth-well (Mr. Lunn). I would like to ask a question on behalf of the party for whom I am speaking. Have the Government in any way considered the request, publicly expressed, for an inquiry into certain aspects of the management of the exhibition? I think the people who have guaranteed these large sums of money have a right to ask for an inquiry if, in their judgment, money has been recklessly spent, or they think that in some of its phases the exhibition was not efficiently or properly managed. Our view is that not only should the Government offer no opposition to inquiries of that kind, if they are properly demanded, but that inquiries should be conceded. Speaking as I can for my hon. Friends on this side of the House, I say we are in favour of an inquiry, in order that the fullest public assurance should be given to those interested, and in order that we should have complete confidence established when, on some future occasion, as I hope will be the case, some effort is made to repeat, perhaps on a larger scale, this very big contribution to our knowledge of the Empire.

Mr. J. JONES: I are not going to enter into the question of the financial and other commitments that may be involved in the British Empire Exhibition. I have heard talk about possible results under certain circumstances, but those of us who live in London—I am now speaking of the ordinary working classes who live in the London area—were not able to visit the exhibition, in particular those living 20 miles away. A large number of the population from the East End of London, who are not ungenerous in their expenditure if they have the means to spend, were debarred from visiting the exhibition. Sunday was a barred day. The "pussyfoots," the people who are able to spend their time during the week as they like, were able to visit the exhibition, but the ordinary working man living this side of King's Cross was never able to visit the exhibition. We lost more than we imagined through the fact that the great mass of the workers of London were not able to go to the exhibition. The very people who ought to have had the opportunity of going could not get there. I venture to suggest that the closing on Sundays
represents the difference in the profit and loss account: but, apart from the financial point of view, we lost more from the educative point of view. if the workman had had an opportunity of visiting the exhibition on Sundays he could have taken his children with him, and they could have been taught something about the beauties of the British Empire, and their knowledge, geographical and otherwise, might have been increased.
I do not know who was responsible for the Sunday closing, and I hope an inquiry will be held to find out. Who were the people who decided that this great panorama of the British Empire could not be seen on Sundays? I do not know anything about it because, naturally, I only saw it twice—at my own expense. [Laughter.] Oh, yes, a lot of Members who have been talking to-night saw it at somebody else's expense—as often as they could. I would honestly like to know why it was decided, and who it was who decided, that the exhibition could not be opened on the only day in the week when the workers of London, numbering practically one-fourth of the population of Great Britain, had the opportunity of visiting it. We talk about the losses, but we have never reckoned up the possibilities. The people of my own constituency, although they are immediately engaged with the products of the Empire —we are in the dock area where they are in communication with Canada, Australia, India, and other places—could not go to the Exhibition because it meant a journey of 23 miles on week days, when they were expected to be at their work. If the exhibition had been opened on Sundays, and reasonable facilities had been given, they could have gone there and we should not have had to face this deficit.
As far as the exhibition land is concerned, we know the land belongs to the lords, and the people thereon: it has nothing to do with me. All my land could be put in a flower-pot. But we want to know what we are going to pay for this land. Is part of the loss to include the price of the land? And who is going to decide the price of the land? In my own constituency, 20 years ago, land for building houses on was sold at £40 an acre, and now, in West Ham, we are paying £600 an acre for land. If an inquiry is going to be held, we ought to discover where this land comes in,
and whether it is part of the charge we have got to pay as a subsidy to the exhibition. Some of us are watching these things, and I hope an inquiry will be held, so that we may know what we have got.
I went to the exhibition and saw all there was to be seen, with some of the things that ought not to have been seen. We are glorying in the fact that there was an exhibition of what the Empire can do, and we hope it will do better in the future.

Sir ALFRED BUTT: I would like, first of all, sincerely to congratulate the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department on the very straightforward way in which he has placed the facts in regard to the British Empire Exhibition before the Committee. On several previous occasions I have criticised the management of the exhibition. To-night I do not propose to criticise the past: rather would I refer to the future. Several hon. Members who have spoken have emphasised the importance of what the exhibition has done. I associate myself entirely with those sentiments, and say that it is impossible to measure in terms of money what the exhibition has accomplished for the Empire, or what it may accomplish in the future. I do not think it is a matter of importance whether it has cost the Government £1,000,000, or £2,000,000 or £3,000,000, if the money was wisely spent: but there is no reason why money should be dissipated if the same result could be secured by economical means.
I am anxious to ask the hon. Member in charge of this Vote a question. I notice that the private guarantors amount to £1,100,000 and the guarantee from the Government is the same amount, so that practically the Government guarantee half the total losses. According to the White Paper the losses are shown as £1,581,000. If we take half that amount it is something less than £800,000. I would like the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department to explain why he wants a Vote of £1,100.000. We have been told that if there is any surplus it will in due course be refunded to the Treasury, but my point is that if it is known that we have passed a Vote for £1,100,000 the Government will be faced with very considerable additional claims. When I last spoke on this matter I asked
the Parliamentary Secretary if he could say whether the expenditure on capital account had been rendered, and I was very pleased to note that the expenditure was put down as complete to the 5th of November, 1925. The hon. Gentleman now says that it should be 1924, and I would like him to give me an assurance that this £300,000 we are voting in excess of our liabilities will not be the cause of additional capital expenditure claims being made.
I should like to express my gratification that the Parliamentary Secretary has publicly paid a tribute to the unselfishness of the guarantors throughout the country who came forward with no possibility of gain and who assured the holding of this exhibition. Two or three hon. Members have suggested that we might have an inquiry, but I hope that will not be pressed. The exhibition is now terminated, and a great deal of good may still arise from its memory. Let us emphasise the good it has done and clear up the deficiency as expeditiously as possible. I hope the Government will give us some assurance that the additional £300,000 will not be absorbed by claims that have not ureviously been made.

Mr. THOMAS: I do not think the Parliamentary Secretary can, from the very nature of things, give a reply to the last question which has been put. Unfortunately, I am one of those who stand in the position of liquidator, and I can speak authoritatively on this point. I want to say that the spirit behind the suggestion and the speech itself made by the last speaker is, after all, the spirit in which I hope this question of the Wembley Exhibition will be discussed. It is a very easy matter for people to be, wise after the event, and it is quite easy for people to say, "I told you so!" First of all, we have to remember that the Vote that we are now asked to pass, and which is the total liability of the Government, is a Vote which in my judgment should be viewed exclusively from the standpoint, first of all, of a commercial proposition; secondly, as an advertisement for the Empire; and, thirdly, as a means by which a possible return for this expenditure will be forthcoming. I have no hesitation in saying that no Government ever had an easier task in
defending this expenditure on all these grounds than the present Government has at the present moment.
I think that the public outside, so far as the guarantors are concerned, ought to be considered and something ought to be said for them. However important the guarantors may be, I want to pay my tribute to them because, whatever you may have observed in the shape of a few grumblers in the Press, you may take it from me authoritatively that the great mass of the people who guaranteed the money for this exhibition are not only not grumbling but they are saying by sending in their cheques that the guarantee they made was a wise guarantee and they have no complaint to make. These complaints are coining from people who are not only not guarantors, but have never paid a bob to see the exhibition, and all this criticism appears to have been jumping in contrary to the wishes of those who, after all, have paid the piper and have a right to call the tune. Therefore I think it necessary for me to say something very definite on this point.
With regard to the last question, I am sure my hon. Friend representing the Government cannot answer it. He cannot say, and will not say, if he takes my advice—and I know much more about it than he does—to this House of Commons and the public that there will be no further call on the guarantors, and he will not say that the additional 5s. will not be called up. Neither he nor I can say that at the moment, but I think the Government are wise in taking the necessary Vote to meet all contingencies that may possibly arise. I hope and believe that the, full amount will not be required, but if it is required the Government will have the least right to complain of anybody else.
My hon. Friend the Member for Silver-town (Mr. J. Jones) asked the pertinent question, "Why was the exhibition not open on Sundays?" and he follows that question up by saying that he is quite sure if it had been opened on Sundays this deficiency would have been wiped out. With regard to the hon. Member's last contention, I am not so sure that this deficit would have been wiped out under those circumstances. I would like to point out, however, that the reason
why the exhibition was not open on Sundays is not due to any puritanical sentiment on the part of any member of the board of management. I do not even attempt to explain it because I cannot at the moment visualise the mentality of Charles II, and I do not know what his particular sentiments were or his morals. All I am concerned with is that it was not the existing members of the board, but Charles II, who was responsible for Wembley not being opened on Sundays.
It is necessary, I will not say to give consolation, but to ask the House to wind up this question in a big spirit. You will ruin, as the last speaker has said, all the advantages of Wembley if you discuss it in a pettifogging spirit, and I am as entitled to say that as any Member on either side, because, when the late Government took office, all the expenditure on capital account had been made. When we took office we found that roughly £3,000,000 had been expended, and we also found that a definite date had been decided upon for the opening. We found, further, that there were many difficulties.
There was not only internal friction, but there was actually a strike existing, and there appeared to be no possibility of the exhibition being opened. That was i he position when my right hon. Friend and myself took office. We were not supposed to be Empire people. We were not supposed to be people who had any interest in the Empire; we were supposed to be anti-Empire people. That was what we found. We discussed it as a Cabinet, and we said, "This is going to be a good thing for the Empire." We also said, "The Colonies have spent their money, the Dominions have spent their money, these Votes have been granted, and the money has been spent; it will be disastrous for the future of the British Empire if any hitch occurs that prevents this exhibition being opened."
That was what we found, and I want to say to the Committee quite clearly, when all the criticism is made, "What would any of you, faced with those facts, have done?" I will tell the Committee what we did. My right hon. Friend, who was then Prime Minister, said to me, " We have got to make this thing go; it-will be fatal in the Dominions and in the Colonies if it does not go"; and the first
job that I had in connection with it was to go down and face 10,000 men on strike, quarrelling with their employers, quarrelling with the exhibition authorities, at war with everybody, and to try and persuade them to go back to work.
10.0 P.M.
That was the first connection of the Labour Government with the British Empire Exhibition. We took on the job, and went down and faced them, and we persuaded them to go to work. They went to work, and the exhibition was opened. Is anyone going to blame either this side or that side for the weather? [A laugh.] It is all very well to laugh, but these are facts. Our next experience was that it was the rottenest weather we ever knew, and I am sure there are a number of people who blame the Labour Government for that. There are quite a number of people who believe we were responsible for the bad weather. In fact, I am told it is suggested that my right hon. Friend was praying for wet weather, and got his wish. We went through, and wound up at the end with a deficit of approximately £2,100,000, At that time there was no talk of Russia— at least, we had not heard it; there was nothing about Red Letter— Zinoviev had not been heard of; and we thought we were still right for our £5,000 the next, year. In other words, we were budgetting on chance, and, as it turned out, we had not a cat's chance. Therefore, we had to say to ourselves, "What about next year?" and, as business people—we were not supposed to be business people, but we were, nevertheless—we said to ourselves that we came in with all these commitments, amounting to £3,000,000 odd, all the estimates had been falsified, and the present Borne Secretary had been called in to conduct an investigation—which we knew nothing about, to which we were not parties, and for which we were not responsible—and he himself had suggestions.
That was the position we found then. We could have taken the line that it was not our business, that we were not responsible; we could have taken the line of pettifogging criticism; but we said, "That may avail for people who are only looking to their own position, but it not good enough or big enough when you approach the question of the Empire as a whole," and we said, "We will take the
responsibility." We went into the position, and we came to this conclusion: We said that, if 24,000,000 people could visit this exhibition in one year, if every Dominion was satisfied, if every Colony was satisfied that good work had been done, what about giving it another chance? We took the responsibility— and here is the first responsibility I accept on behalf of the late Government —we took the responsibility of recommending another year of Wembley, and, let the Committee observe, we recommended it with a deficit of £2,100,000. We passed that recommendation on, by the unfortunate accident of the Russian Letter, to my right hon. Friend, and he said to himself, when he called his colleagues together, "Well, we have talked a lot during the General Election about the incapacity, the imbecility and the danger of these fellows, but, you know, between ourselves, while that is all right for the Election, it cuts no ice when we know what they have done." Therefore. calling his colleagues together, he said, "What about this recommendation?" and, of course, there was a unanimous vote, and every one of them said with enthusiasm, "This is one the best legacies they have handed over to us." Then they adopted our proposal, and they said that, of course, they would carry it on just as we had recommended, the difference being that all the kudos was on that side and all the work on this side.
We, have now had 12 months of it, and, at the end of 12 months, after better weather—due to their praying and our swearing—it is wound up. We unbusinesslike, incompetent people, ignorant of finance and commerce, were in this position, that in 1924 there was a deficit of £2,000,000 odd. But here let me strike a serious note. Our Dominions were in a bad way—and I want to stress this point because I want the Committee to appreciate the case—there was a feeling of irritation, and not a solitary Dominion or Colony was happy at the end of the exhibition of 1924. I will tell you why, because they had got it into their minds, falsely, I think, but unfortunately they had got it in their minds that all of them were paying the piper and we were getting the benefit. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa were all irritated because they
had all spent money and the British Government had not spent a bob! Make no mistake about that. In 1924 neither our Government nor your Government had spent a bob. Keep that in mind. Canada had spent £400,000, South Africa had spent over £300.000, and all our Dominions had spent money except ourselves. We had not spent a bob. We bad merely said we guaranteed it. Now there was a very strained feeling. You may take it from me. I took this view, that it would ruin the real success of the Empire Exhibition if, as the. result of it, our Colonies and Dominions were not closer to us than they were before it started.
I want to congratulate the Government on adopting our suggestion. We said to them, "Now look here, we have got to give a little bit of sugar here." I need not go into details, but they accepted all the sugar we gave them, and the result was we brought all the Dominions and all the Colonies in again. Then we run the exhibition for this year and we wind up, notwithstanding this incapable, incompetent and ignorant business capacity of the late Government, by having wiped off £200,000 of the deficit. Therefore in round figures you are in this position. We took on the deficits and the liabilities and all the difficulties and we wind up and give you £200,000. That is absolutely unchallenged. These are the cold, hard, solid facts of the business. I want to say this, that if this deficit were double what it is—notwithstanding anything that has been said by hon. Members of my own party, and here let me say my party wants an inquiry—as far as I am concerned, and I am speaking now personally, I would welcome any inquiry. We have shirked no responsibility of any sort or kind and we will welcome the inquiry, but in welcoming it I would deplore that anything should happen that would destroy the value and the spirit behind what Wembley really meant. Measure it by your £2.100.000, measure at the maximum, and I take the maximum figure, of £1,100,000 as the Government's contribution. You have already voted a sum of £2,000,000 and have already said you were prepared to spend £2,000,000 on advertising, and on propaganda regarding the value of the British Empire. I say deliberately that, whatever may be your expenditure of this £2,000,000, whatever you may decide to
do, you will never get more value from your money so far as the Empire is concerned than you have already dons out of Wembley. Twenty-eight million people visited Wembley, 4,000,000 school children visited Wembley, and the impression has been left on their minds that generations yet unborn will appreciate in the future.
I took the responsibility of writing to every Dominion and every Colony and asking them this question: "You having sprat so much money, will you tell mo whether in your opinion that expenditure has been justified? Will you tell me whether in your opinion it has been of value to you either as a Dominion or a Colony?" That question was put to every Dominion and every Colony, and the Prime Minister who is here, will remember that I showed him the replies of every Dominion and every Colony and he can confirm what I am going to say. Every Dominion and every Colony without a solitary exception, not only replied that they were well satisfied with their expenditure, not only replied that they were justified in all that they had done, but without, a solitary exception every one of them said that trade and commerce within the Empire and with their particular Dominion or Colony had benefited as a result of that exhibition. That is the unanimous conclusion of their replies. Therefore I content myself by saying this. I threw myself into this work because I believed it was a good work. I had to meet many criticisms. I was condemned by many people for the attitude I took. I make no apology for it. You will not measure Wembley by the balance sheet of pounds shillings and pence.
You will not appreciate all that Wembley did by the Vote that you are taking to-night. If you want an inquiry, have it. There is nothing to hide, though, because they were human people dealing with them, mistakes were made. Pettifogging criticism will arise. Some guarantors will squirm. The Government have less to complain of than anyone else. Therefore, if an inquiry is demanded, give it, but do not let it be a pettifogging roving commission which is going to destroy all the value that has already been done. Do not say to your Dominions and your Colonies that you are running away from an expenditure that they have already incurred. In other
words, let us be as big as our Dominions and our Colonies. I say to the Government, just as I said on Locarno, they got all the plums and we did the work, though the Prime Minister was able to get up and say, "I have done the trick, we did the job," so in Wembley, again, they are reaping all the advantage and we did the donkey work.

Mr. SAMUEL: I think the whole Committee have listened with great pleasure to a speech full of good feeling and broadmindedness. It is all of a piece with the work the right hon. Gentleman put in at the Wembley Exhibition. I can say on my own behalf that on many occasions he personally helped me to smooth over difficulties, and I am very much obliged to him. One or two questions have been raised, and although I made a good draft on the patience of the Committee when opening the discussion, perhaps the Committee would like me to deal with questions in detail. The last point put to me was by my hon. Friend the Member for Balham and Tooting (Sir A. Butt). The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Thomas) answered that question very well for me, and all I can say is that the line he took in his comment upon what my hon. Friend said is one that I should have taken myself.

Sir A. BUTT: The right hon. Gentle-man's reply, which the hon. Gentleman says was so much better than he could have made, did not answer my question at all. What I asked specifically was, has the whole capital expenditure account been rendered.

Mr. THOMAS: I want this Debate to finish on a high note. It would be foolish to answer "No," but this is the difficulty. There is in dispute at this moment a very considerable sun on capital account. Obviously, as one having to deal with it, it is not for me to prejudice the situation. All I have to say to you is that no-one can say the expenditure is fully met. All I can say to you and to the guarantors is that not a copper will be paid unless we are satisfied that it is a legitimate claim, but equally we have no reason to doubt that any claim has been made that is not bona fide. That is the position we are in. There are disputed claims.

Mr. SAMUEL: I have been asked what is the reserve price we have put on the property. The property does not belong
to the Government. Also I have been asked, did we give out the contracts. We do not give out contracts. Hon. Members must bear in mind, as I have endeavoured to impress on them on several occasions, that the exhibition authorities are the responsible authorities. They give out the contracts and the liquidators are the vendors of the property, and we have nothing to do with it.
We, the Government, are not the parties concerned. All we have to do is to see that certain conditions which were imposed by the House of Commons under the Guarantee Act are complied with, and we give the guarantee of £1,100,000. We are only concerned as guarantors and not as liquidators or givers out of contracts. One hon. Member asked what is the reserve price of the Wembley property? The liquidators, the right hon. Member for Derby, one of the ablest accountants of the day, Sir Arthur Whinncy, and Sir James Cooper, who represents the Treasury, can be relied upon to get the last possible farthing for this property. I would ask to be excused for saying more. It would be very foolish on my part to say anything which might prejudice the sale at the highest possible price. The Committee may rest assured that the liquidators who are looking after the interests of all concerned will get everything possible out of the property. The less I say about the matter at the present time the better.
A further question which has been asked is in relation to an inquiry. The line taken by the right hon. Member for Derby was a very wise one, and I cannot improve upon it. It is true that there have been certain whisperings about an inquiry, but the demand for it has not been widespread. As the right hon. Gentleman said, it may have come from people who had very little at risk in the matter. Let me remind the Committee that these demands ought, at any rate, to be based upon something substantial. Is fraud alleged? If so, I have not heard of it. If any people allege fraud, let them come forward and make specific charges. A roving commission, a fishing expedition, would do no good to anybody, but would ruffle people's feelings and disturb the kindly atmosphere that now exists. If there is nothing alleged
of an unworthy or disreputable nature, I would deprecate the question of an inquiry.
I was very pleased to hear the speech of the hon. Member for Newton (Mr. R. Young). It was a generous speech, representing the average opinion about the exhibition in the whole country. The speech of the right hon. Member for Miles Platting (Mr. Clynes) was a broad-minded speech, accepting what was good and trying to overlook the errors as far as possible. I would ask hon. Members to realise that this exhibition was a colossal undertaking and that it was built up in months not years. A great exhibition like this cannot spring ready-made like Minerva, fully armed, from the head of Zeus. It takes a good deal of time to build up an enterprise of this kind, and if some mistakes owing to haste or unforeseen difficulties have been made condemnation should not be put forward over the mistakes but wonder should be expressed that so few mistakes have been made.
The hon. Member for Springburn (Mr. Hardie) and the hon. Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren) put several questions. With regard to the site, I would point out that the freehold portion totalled 150 acres, and the price paid for it, seeing that it was so near London and so useful for developing for housing purposes, was not excessive. The price was £500 an acre, amounting to a total of £75,000. That property belongs to the exhibition authorities, and we think it is worth to-day a much higher price, and trust that a higher price will be received for it by the liquidators. The remaining cost of £20,000 represents certain odds and ends and two houses, which had to be bought from the Wembley Park Estate.
With regard to the architects' and other professional fees, amounting to £83,000, I would remind hon. Members that this is in respect of a very large capital outlay in buildings. The usual fee paid in these cases is 6 per cent. but the recipients were good enough to accept half the usual fee, namely, 3 per cent. I was also asked whether the contractors have made any deduction from their charges towards meeting the loss on the exhibition. The answer that I can give to that question will, I think, greatly surprise the hon. Member. The chief contractor is the
largest guarantor—£150,000. The consequence is that he is proved to have acted with public spirit, and that answers the hon. Member's question.

Mr. HARDIE: How about the people from whom the land was bought?

Mr. SAMUEL: I cannot say off-hand who were the owners of the 150 acres, other than the railway company.

Mr. J. H. THOMAS: A wicked railway company!

Mr. SAMUEL: It appears the owners were a wicked railway company. I was asked why the golf club had been demolished, The reason was that it stood on the proposed site of the exhibition, and consequently had to be removed, at a cost of £960. Then there was the expenditure of £119,000 on roads. It is hoped that some value will be received for that outlay when the site is sold. The site for sale belongs to the exhibition authorities, and they will get back all that can be got, including if possible the cost of roads.

Mr. HARDIE: May I ask whether the parties of whom you speak can be given instructions from the Government as to whether they should sell the land or keep if?

Mr. SAMUEL: The matter is in the hands of the liquidators. I have answered all the questions, and I now appeal to the Committee to give me the Vote.

Mr. RUNCIMAN: This is not a matter which is likely to pass without some further consideration being devoted to it. I ask the Committee to believe that those who criticise the accounts are not lacking in their admiration of the educational value of the institution. The service which the exhibition rendered to the Empire cannot be measured in pounds, shillings and pence, and I would assure the hon. Gentleman who speaks for the Government that he is not the only person who has the greatest possible admiration for the way in which the educational side of the exhibition was conducted and the influence which it has had upon public opinion in this country and elsewhere. One of the reasons why I have ventured to look closely into these accounts is that the British Government and the British taxpayer are, indeed, the largest guarantors. They hare, and they demand
the right through this House, to have full information given to them as to the way in which the money has been spent, the items which appear in the accounts, and how it is estimated that the final accounts will be closed.
There has never been a word of complaint uttered against the British Dominions or anybody connected with them. Not a single Commissioner has heard a whisper of criticism directed at him. There is no one in Canada or in New Zealand or in South Africa or in Australia who has the least ground for saying that any scrutiny exercised by this Committee over the exhibition accounts has cast the least reflection on them. They did their work admirably. They certainly took the greatest possible trouble to place before the public of the United Kingdom an amazing exhibition of the wealth, the beauty, and the industry of the Empire, such as had never been known before. That has never been in question. No one challenges that fact, but it must not be supposed because we have a great admiration for those who gathered together these amazing exhibits, which played such an admirable part in in forming a people who know far too little of the British Empire beyond the seas, that we must therefore allow these accounts to go through without criticism and almost without examination. If one may gather anything from the gestures of the hon. Gentleman in charge of the Estimate, he seemed to think that the mere mention of the matter is almost improper.

Mr. SAMUEL: I must protest against that remark, coming from the right hon. Gentleman, who has only come in here quite recently, and has not heard the earlier speeches.

Mr. RUNCIMAN: The time at which I came in certainly did not give me the privilege and honour of listening to the hon. Gentleman. Nevertheless he has circulated a document which we have a right to examine, and which I propose to examine, however unpalatable it may be to him. There are a great many other people who have only come into the House recently, and I have heard no reproach made against them. If I am guilty of tedious repetition the Chairman will call me to order, and I think the hon. Gentleman had better leave that duty to be performed by the Chairman.

Mr. SAMUEL: What I pointed out was that I did explain these matters, and that the right hon. Gentleman was not here to listen.

Mr. RUNCIMAN: I do not charge the hon. Gentleman with not explaining, but the hon. Gentleman expresses irritation at questions being asked on this subject. I would remind the Committee that this is not the first time we have had these accounts before us, and the same thing happened on the last occasion when we discussed them.

Mr. DENNIS HERBERT: Read the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. RUNCIMAN: I do not need to read the OFFICIAL REPORT, because I was here during all those discussions.

Mr. HERBERT: You were not here just now.

Mr. RUNCIMAN: On that occasion exactly the same attitude was taken up by the hon. Gentleman. I beg of him not to regard these money matters so lightly. He is responsible for bringing an Estimate which asks for £1,100,000 of public money, and we have the right to ask where that money has gone.

Mr. HERBERT: We have been told.

Mr. RUNCIMAN: I am going to have my say on this matter, and am certainly not going to allow a Vote of this kind to go through without protest. The capital expenditure on this exhibition was estimated at about £1,150,000, but we find now it is well over £3,000,000. Does not that justify a much fuller explanation than the hon. Gentleman gave either in his opening speech or in his second speech? He left the explanation to the right hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench.

Mr. HERBERT: Did you hear it?

Mr. RUNCIMAN: Yes, I did. The right hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench explained that the extra cost of the building, of the ground and so on was due to strike troubles and the weather, and the fact that the Exhibition became more extensive than was at first anticipated. These explanations do not satisfy the British taxpayer that all this money has been well spent, or that it has been spent with
a due regard to safeguarding the public purse. The idea seems to be current that these accounts as published are final, and that this is the last we shall hear of them, but it is not the last we shall hear of them. They are not final accounts. They are mere estimated accounts. They do not wind up the Exhibition, but leave a considerable number of figures still to be settled. On the first page of this document, it is stated emphatically that the estimated realisable value of the unrealised assets is taken into account and that the ultimate loss or deficiency will not be less than £1,580,000. The hon. Gentleman has not been able to give us any indication of how much more it may be. One or two things we do know. Some of these items will be much swollen before the final accounts are issued. Take the case of the Stadium. I doubt very much whether the Stadium will appear in the final accounts at the figure given here. It is much more likely to be in the region of £600,000. Who can say that this sum has been well spent and economically spent? In item after item, we find the same thing arising.
The hon. Gentleman may say it is not his fault. I do not accuse him of having been loose in the expenditure of public funds, for, indeed, his Department has never had enough control over the exhibition. It was the complaint of his predecessor that the Overseas Trade Department had not control over the administration of the exhibition, and it is unfair to blame those who preceded the present Government with any of the loose capital expenditure to which attention has been drawn. I am sure no one would think of accusing my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby of not having been very carefu1l during his period of administration, and I am quite sure that in liquidating what remains of the assets he will safeguard the public interest as well as he can. They are three excellent liquidators, but what they are likely to get out of this no one can tell. The only thing we know is that the property will be difficult to sell, and nobody would wish to add to their difficulties, but that is no reason why we should not ask that the accounts presented to us should be much more precise and that there should be a much closer scrutiny of the expenditure.
When I come to the running accounts, the first startling item that I find is under the heading of "General salaries and allowances, £208,000." It has been freely stated that the staff which managed the exhibition was far larger than it need have been, and it was notorious that at one time there was a great deal of friction between the two sections of the management. Where there was friction in the management there was bound to be increased expenditure. The ground on which a Committee of Inquiry has been asked is not in order to disclose scandals, but to find out whether there has or has not been extravagance. What guard has been taken by the Government or the governing body of the exhibition against undue expenditure of what has ultimately become public money? I hope we have heard the last of the idea that when we have to scrutinise these accounts we are committing some offence. What are we here for, but to guard the public money?

Mr. ASHMEAD-BARTLETT: Why did you not turn up earlier?

Mr. RUNCIMAN: That is my business. At all events, I am here now, and expressing my views, and that is more than the hon. and gallant Member has dared to do. I think we are entitled to have an inquiry into the estimates that were made. It was not considered against the public interest to have an inquiry when the present Home Secretary was at the Treasury and responsible, and why should it be against the interest of anybody that there should be an inquiry now, when the accounts are on the point of being closed, and the whole thing may pass away from the purview of the public? If we are not to have these accounts as closely scrutinised as though there was a Public Accounts Committee to deal with them, there will always be left a suspicion, and a well-grounded suspicion, that there was not due care taken in the safeguarding of the public purse. If any representative of a Government Department were to come here, and say that the Public Accounts Committee was behaving improperly in looking too closely into the expenditure of his Department, he would be laughed out of court. Why, then, should the representative of the Government or my right hon. Friend on the Front Opposition Bench think there is anything improper in an inquiry? I am sure my right hon.
Friend would not object to an inquiry. Then why not let us have it? There is a demand outside for it that, I can assure the hon. Gentleman, is likely to be insistent, and certainly it is not going to be dropped.
An inquiry need cost very little. There are many people who would be glad to undertake it without being paid fees, and there is no reason why an inquiry should not be conducted, if necessary, by Members of this House. You can select, if you like, a committee which is a microcosm of the House, giving the Government a majority and letting each party be represented according to its size. We will not grumble about that. It is a question not only of audit, but of the true exposure of facts which could be laid before a Committee of the House, where it is possible for everyone's interests to be protected. There have been one or two aspersions cast in this Debate which, I think, necessitate an inquiry. The hon. Member for Springburn (Mr. Hardie) made some reference to my right hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). I do not know whether the hon. Member told my right hon. Friend he was going to mention his name in this Debate. It certainly would have been usual for him to do so The main reason I have risen is to say that if there be anything that has not been disclosed, it ought to be disclosed at once, and to ask why so distinguished a Member as my right hon. Friend- however much Members in any quarter of the House may disagree with him—should be put under a shade of suspicion in any quarter, without his friends or colleagues in this House asking that there should be a full disclosure of the accusations.

Sir HARRY FOSTER: Why should the right hon. Gentleman give currency to the accusation?

Mr. RUNCIMAN: I am perfectly entitled to take up any accusation made against any Member of this House.

Sir W. LANE MITCHELL: It was not made.

Sir ROBERT THOMAS: Yes, it was made by the hon. Member for Springburn (Mr. Hardie).

Mr. J. JONES: Might I ask the right hon. Gentleman to give any evidence of a statement made by the hon. Member
for Springburn impugning the honour of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs?

Sir R. THOMAS: I was in the House when this statement was made. A reference was made by the hon. Member for Springburn that a large sum of money had been passed over in connection with the buildings. Of course, he knew that was a statement he could not make outside, and he immediately turned round to these benches, and said that he regretted the absence of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs.

The CHAIRMAN: It does not seem that any point of order can arise out of what the right hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Runciman) said. I understand that a statement has been made reflecting on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), and, if that be so, the right hon. Member for Swansea is in order in commenting on it.

Mr. RUNCIMAN: I do not want to give currency to any ungrounded suspicion, but when a suggestion of that kind is made, we ought to have a full disclosure of the facts concerned. I am sure no suggestion of irregularity would ever be made against him, and I do not think it should be made in this connection without his having full opportunity of being heard.
We are asked to-night to pass a Supplementary Vote of £1,100,000. That Supplementary Estimate is not the end of what we may have to deal with. The right hon. Gentleman in charge of this Vote assured the House on a previous occasion that he would not have to ask this House to provide any more money. I hope he will succeed in adhering to that undertaking, and, if so, we shall it all events know that he has fulfilled his part, of the promise. The one thing that is necessary is that with the accounts that are drawing to a close, we should receive not only the active support, as we are receiving it, of Sir James Cooper and the other two liquidators, who are doing the work to the best of their ability, but that the public mind should be set fully at rest that there is not undue extravagance, that the estimate is not drawn too loosely, and that what has happened in the exhibition on its financial side—not on
its educational or material side—is entirely above suspicion. I have no doubt that those who have been in charge of the financial arrangements will think of this. One thing is quite certain, which is that the financial anticipations have been in almost every instance belied. There is very little reason why we in this House engaged in such a serious undertaking, and making serious comment upon the matter, should not know what we want.

Mr. THOMAS: I apologise to the House, but perhaps I may be allowed to make this statement on behalf of the liquidator. I did not understand the hon. Member for Springburn (Mr. Hardie) made a charge. I want to say, however, that no Member of this House, of any party, has a right under cover here, to make a charge that he would not take the responsibility of making outside. I have nothing but contempt for anyone who would abuse that privilege. I did not understand that my hon. Friend made that charge. I want clearly and definitely to say that it is not true. It would be a wicked libel on everyone connected with the exhibition to connect the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) with any influence of any sort or kind, and it would be as bad and as wicked to connect the contractors, who, as far as our evidence goes, did their work well. It is unfair to make aspersions of that kind. Do not let us have an inquiry—a mere roving commission. But if any Member of this House likes to take a charge outside that can be investigated, the liquidator will welcome any investigation.

Resolutions to be Reported To-morrow.

Committee to sit again To-morrow.

WAYS AND MEANS.

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. JAMES HOPE in the Chair.]

Resolved,
That towards making good the Supply granted to His Majesty for the Service of the year ending on the 31st day of March. 1926, the sum of £10,100,000 be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom."—[Mr. Ronald McNeill]

Resolution to be reported To-morrow.

Committee to sit again To-morrow.

LAND SETTLEMENT (FACILITIES) AMENDMENT BILL.

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Mr. HARDIE: I understand—

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. James Hope): Does the hon. Gentleman rise to a point of Order?

Mr. HARDIE: Yes. I wish to make an explanation. I was just railed out on other business. I understand a statement has been made regarding myself, and I want to put the point right.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The Question is "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Mr. HARDIE: Can I make the statement now?

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I am afraid not. There will be an opportunity on the Motion for the Adjournment of the House.

Mr. GUINNESS: The object of this Bill is to amend the provision regarding valuations which were contained in the Land Settlement Act, 1919, so that the arrangements then made with the local authorities may be carried out. It was laid down in that Bill of 1919, that on 1st April next, the valuation would take place which, in the words of Sir Arthur Boscawen, would enable the Government to hand over to I he county councils the whole of the holdings on a self-supporting basis. There was no doubt as to the arrangement between the Government and the county councils, because Sir Arthur Boscawen also said he quite realised "that we have to hand over those holdings at the end of the septennial period on a strictly self-supporting basis; in other words, that they ought not to incur any loss. The valuation provisions in the original Bill were very obscurely framed. The State was only to be responsible for the loan charges on the difference between the present day capital value of the land as let for small holdings or allotments and the total capital liabilities of the scheme.
This basis would leave local authorities with the duty of financing the difference
between the loan charges on their share of the capital valuation and the actual revenue which is now receivable in the form of rents from small holdings. It was never intended to throw such a responsibility on local authorities. We propose to amend this provision and to base the valuation on the annual value of both assets and liabilities, leaving the State to bear the difference between those annual values. Apart from securing that the original understanding with the county councils shall be carried out, this system has the advantage of automatically decreasing the State's contribution as the short term loans run off. There will be a gradually falling sum due from the, State. We also propose to make an economy in the method of valuation. Instead of the figures being arrived at by independent valuers, we propose that the valuation shall be made by agreement between the State and the local authorities, and that we shall only have the costly method of calling in an outside valuer to arbitrate in those cases where differences may arise.

Sir FREDRIC WISE: What is the amount to be paid?

Mr. GUINNESS: I will come to that in a moment. At the present time we are settling with the local authorities in arrears on the basis of actual loss. When the new valuation is complete it is contemplated that we shall make payments during the year as payments fall due, but obviously in the year when we change over we shall be charged with a double burden for one year. There is nothing definite in the Act of 1919, but it was always believed that the State would change over to the new system next financial year. We propose to postpone that change over to the financial year 1929-30; and the reason for that is the very heavy charge which has been thrown on the Estimates of the Ministry of Agriculture by the remarkable success of the sugar-beet industry. So great is the development that, next year, we expect to pay subsidies amounting to about £3,000,000. In 1929–30, which will be the fifth season of the operation of the subsidy scheme, the subsidy will be automatically reduced by one-third, and that will be a favourable occasion for taking this exceptional burden upon the Estimates of the Ministry.
11.0 P.M.
The hon. Member for the Hillsborough Division (Mr. A. V. Alexander) asked me the other night if I could give any estimate as to the difference in the amount paid by the State now and under this new system, and I told him at the time that it was quite impossible. The reason for that is that the basis laid down in the Act of 1919 is so obscure as to be practically unascertainable, and only by the wildest shot could we foretell what figure might be arrived at by all these independent valuations. The hon. Member would probably like to know what we think will be the result of the valuations on the basis we wish to lay down. At the present time we are paying, on the basis of ascertained loss, about £875,000 a year. If the House will allow this new basis to come into force, we estimate that the payments will be reduced to about £750,000, that is, an approximate saving of £125,000 a year, but I must give this figure under reserve, because it is obviously only an estimate, and I cannot foretell how far it will be possible to realise it. I must also say that in the first year of transfer to the new basis the figure will be much lower than the £750,000, it is estimated at £560,000, for this reason, that now that we are paying on the basis of ascertained loss some of the interest charges which we pay for the previous year are not really made by the local authorities until the subsequent period. When we change over we shall get credit for that in the year in which the change is made. This Bill is the result of long negotiations with the local authorities. We are now engaged upon collecting the material for this valuation, and it is most important that at the earliest possible moment they should get definite instructions as to how this valuation should be made. It is for these reasons at this late period of the Session that we bring forward this Bill and ask the House to pass it.

Mr. A. V. ALEXANDER: I am sure the House is pleased with the very careful and lucid explanation which the right hon. Gentleman has given of this Bill, and so far as my hon. Friends on these benches are concerned we welcome this Measure, and we recognise that it is necessary not only in the interests of the financial arrangements of local
authorities, but also in order to redeem the pledge given in 1919. Although we may have one or two questions which I am sure the Government will be willing to answer, I want to point out that our attitude on these benches will be to facilitate the early passage into law of this Measure.
Having said that, I want to ask one or two questions with a view to assisting the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill. In the first place he has referred to a statement which appears in the White Paper in which it states that the local authorities have fully considered this Bill before it was introduced. I accept the very great importance of the opinion of the County Councils Association in this matter because it is a. very powerful body, and if they are satisfied with this Measure it is not necessary for us to inquire too closely into the questions affecting county areas. I would like to point out, however, that county boroughs are also interested.
I notice that the White Paper states that the Government have consulted some of the representatives of the county boroughs. Some of my hon. Friends are anxious about this matter, and perhaps they have not been directly concerned in the negotiations. It there is any county which feels that it has not been consulted, I hope the Government will be willing to meet their representatives as soon as possible and endeavour to settle any differences which they may have in regard to procedure, so that they will feel that they have the same protection as has been secured by the County Councils' Association. Whilst I understand clearly the point made by the right hon. Gentleman in charge of this Bill as to how the charges will vary for the first few years, I am not quite clear as to the exact effect of the beet-sugar subsidies.
It would be out of order to go into the old controversy about the sugar beet subsidy, nor do I desire to delay the House by doing so, but some of us did say, at the time when that Measure was passing through the House, that it would have a very considerable effect upon the rental values of land, and we should no doubt see the harvest some time. Long before we expected that, in a Bill dealing with land which is to be handed over to the county councils as was promised, we see provision made for
the variation of rental values. I think that that is very important, having regard to the fact that the right hon. Gentleman tells us with glee, if I may say so, that the sugar beet subsidy scheme is so successful that he expects the Government will have to pay £3,000,000 in subsidy next year. That is going to have a very considerable effect on rental values. I am not quarrelling with the arrangement as outlined for the first three or four years, but what is the position of the local authority going to be after the reduction of the subsidy, which will come automatically under the Sugar Beet Subsidy Act?
I take it that the future relationship between the State and the local authorities will depend upon one valuation made in April, 1926, and each year afterwards the sum paid by the Government will be a matter for adjustment according to the discrepancy between the rental value and the amount of the local charges and so on. When the sugar beet subsidy is reduced—I am a little doubtful, sometimes, as to whether it ever will be reduced, looking at the sugar market—what is going to be the position? Do the Government intend that fresh legislation for a new valuation shall be introduced, or are they going to make arrangements, in the valuation, as set out in this Bill, in April, 1926, for meeting all the eventualities in connection with the sugar beet subsidy? I think that that is a matter of importance upon which we might ask for some further information from the Government, and if the right hon. Gentleman could tell us something about that to-night, I think it might facilitate matters during the Committee stage, because, as I have already said, we are not anxious to delay the Bill. We think if is a necessary Bill in the interests of settlement schemes and the finance of local authorities, and, if the right hon. Gentleman will help us in that direction, we shall be glad.

Mr. RUNCIMAN: I only rise for the single object of saying that, even granting the premises from which the Minister starts, I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. A. V. Alexander) some apprehension as to the enormous growth of the Sugar Beet Subsidy, and that the conditions that are likely to occur as a result of the growth of that subsidy will require our careful
scrutiny from time to time. While we do not oppose the Second Reading of the Bill, there will be some points that we shall have to raise in Committee. We shall raise them, of course, in the most helpful spirit possible, but I hope it will not be thought that we agree exactly with the premises which the right hon. Gentleman as outlined to-night without feeling some misgivings in our minds and, possibly, taking steps to curtail this rapidly growing subsidy in the future.

Mr. GUINNESS: I think, from the remarks of the hon. Member for Hills-borough (Mr. A. V. Alexander), that I cannot have made myself quite clear in reference to the Sugar Beet Subsidy. I know of no effect whatever that it can have upon the valuation. The valuation is made once for all on 1st April next and merely for the purpose of ascertaining the sums due annually, and, when the sugar subsidy is reduced from 19s. 6d to 13s., it will be much easier to deal with the exceptional double charge due to changing over from payments in arrears to payments during the current year. It does not affect the smallholder; it is only for the sake of financial convenience that we propose the arrangement set out in the Bill.

Mr. ALEXANDER: Does the right hon. Gentleman really suggest that the payment of the Sugar Beet Subsidy, in areas where there are small holdings, and where beet may be grown on some of these small holdings, it is not going to affect the rental values?

Mr. GUINNESS: I do not think it will appreciably affect them by the 1st April, 1926. There are many small holdings in my constituency, and as the House will appreciate, I have been round a lot of them within the last few days.

Lieut.-Colonel WATTS-MORGAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman reply regarding the county boroughs?

Mr. GUINNESS: Certainly. If there be any of the county boroughs who have not been consulted I shall be glad to consult them.

Bill committed to a Committee of the Whole House for To-morrow.—[Commander Eyres Monsell.]

GAS REGULATION ACT, 1920.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, on the application of the Northampton Gaslight Company, which was presented on the 17th June and published, be approved, subject to the following addition:

After Clause 11, insert the following Clause:
The following provision for the protection of the Northamptonshire County Council (in this Section referred to as 'the county council') shall, unless otherwise agreed upon in writing between the company and the county council, apply and have effect (that is to say):
Section eight of the Gasworks Clauses Act, 1847, incorporated with this Order, shall be read and have effect as if, in respect of any street, bridge, sewer, drain, or tunnel under the control or management of the county council, the period of fourteen clear days were inserted therein instead of the period of three clear days in the said Section mentioned, and the notice therein mention shall be given to the surveyor of the county council. Provided that this Sub-section shall not apply in the case of any opening or breaking up for the purpose of laying, connecting, or repairing consumers' service pipes.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, on the application of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the Borough of Leigh, which was presented on the 16th November and published, be approved.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, on the application of the Hornsey Gas Company, which was presented on the 16th November and published, be approved.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, on the application of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the Borough of Port Talbot, which was presented on the 17th November and published, be approved.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920. on the application of the Lea Bridge District Gas Company, which was presented on the 17th November and published, be approved.—[Sir Burton Chadwick.]

ELECTRICITY (SUPPLY) ACTS.

Resolved,
That the Special Order made by the Electricity Commissioners under the Electricity (Supply) Acts, 1882 to 1922. and confirmed by the Minister of Transport under the Electricity (Supply) Act. 1919, in respect of the urban district of Prestatyn, in the county of Flint, which was presented on the 16th day of November, 1925. be approved.

Resolved,
That the Special Order made by the Electricity Commissioners under the Electricity (Supply) Acts, 1882 to 1922, and confirmed by the Minister of Transport under the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1919, in respect of the urban district of Woodbridge, and the parish of Melton, in the rural district of Woodbridge, in the administrative county of East Suffolk, which was presented on the 16th day of November, 1925, be approved.

Resolved,
That the Special Order made by the Electricity Commissioners under the Electricity (Supply) Acts, 1882 to 1922. and confirmed by the Minister of Transport under the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1919, in respect of part of the county borough of Barnsley, in the West Riding of the county of York, which was presented on the 16th day of November, 1925, be approved.

Resolved,
That the Special Order made by the Electricity Commissioners under the Electricity (Supply) Acts, 1882 1o 1922, and confirmed by the Minister of Transport under the Electricity (Supply's Act, 1919, in respect of part of the rural district of Preston in the County Palatine of Lancaster, which was presented on the 16th day of November, 1925, be approved.—[Colonel Ashley.]

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Special Order made by the Electricity Commissioners under the Electricity (Supply) Acts, 1882 to 1922, and confirmed by the Minister of Transport under the Electricity (Supply) Act. 1919, in respect of the urban district of Crediton, in the county of Devon, which was presented on the 16th day of November, 1925, be approved.—[Colonel Ashley.]

Mr. ALEXANDER: What is the company concerned?

The MINISTER of TRANSPORT (Colonel Ashley): It is the Urban District Council of Crediton.

The remaining Government Orders were read, and postponed.

Whereupon, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of 16th November, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."

BRITISH EMPIRE EXHIBITION.

PERSONAL EXPLANATION.

Mr. HARDIE: I understand that, during my temporary absence from the House, some statement was made regarding what I was supposed to have said during the Debate on the British Empire Exhibition. I did not hear the charge made against me, but I have no recollection of saying anything that connected any Member of this House with what I am supposed to be charged with, whether it was thought to be libel or slander or anything of that kind. I am quite prepared to leave the matter to the OFFICIAL REPORT and to stand by that; but if anyone thinks that there was slander or libel on any Member, he is mistaken. Those who know me best know that I am direct. I do not go roundabout ways to tell people what I think of them. So far as the Debate to-night was concerned, I was asking the hon. Member in charge of the Debate who were coming forward to share the responsibility as well as the guarantors. I asked, for instance, about the people who had contracts for the buildings, and I turned round and said: "If the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) had been present, he would have told us, something about it," but so far as linking him up with it is concerned, I deny it. I made no such statement. I am not guilty. I am surprised that the hon. Member who made the charge, when I had been in the House since a quarter to three o'clock, did not make certain that I was in the House when he made that charge.

Sir R. THOMAS: I should be very sorry to misrepresent anything the hon. Member said, but I am sure he will admit that he said, in connection with the transfer of money, that he could not explain that outside the House; he would not dare do
so. I think I am in the recollection of hon. Members of the House that he said that. Without explaining in what way he connected my right hon. Friend with Wembley, he immediately, after making that statement, turned round and said he regretted the right hon. Gentleman's absence. That was an insinuation that I think I was perfectly justified in resenting.

Mr. HARDIE: I turned round to say that if the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs had been present, he could have given us the information direct. We were putting questions to the hon. Gentleman in charge of the Estimate who was not sufficiently acquainted with the exhibition. I hope no hon. Member thinks I was casting aspersions on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. I ask hon. Members to believe that I was not in any way casting aspersions. If the hon. Member for Anglesey (Sir R. Thomas) feels aggrieved in any way, he can take any redress he likes as far as this House is concerned. I stand by the integrity of the House, and if anyone thinks he is aggrieved at anything I say, I am willing to apologise for what I may have done wrong, although I do not think there is any necessity in this case. If, however, it would make peace, and I were called upon, I would even apologise for anything I was supposed to say, but had not said, if by doing so it would make peace.

Mr. RUNCIMAN: I am sure the House will accept the explanation given by the hon. Member for Springburn (Mr. Hardie). If there was any misinterpretation, it must have boon a slip on the part of the hon. Member. He has given such a complete assurance that he wished to cast no aspersion, that I am sure my right hon. Friend will think nothing more about the matter.

Adjourned accordingly at Seventeen Minutes after Eleven o'Clock.